UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT    LOS  ANGELES 


THE  GIFT  OF 

MAY  TREAT  MORRISON 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

ALEXANDER   F  MORRISON 


Organized 
Labor  and  Capital 

The  William  L.  Bull  Lec- 
tures   for    the    Year    1904 


Being 
The  Past,  by  Rev.  Washington  Gladden,  D.  D., 
The  Corporation,  by  Talcott  Williams,  LL.  D., 
The  Union,  by  Rev.  George  Hodges,  D.  C.  L., 
The  People,  by  Rev.  Francis  G.  Peabody,  LL.  D. 


PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE  W.  JACOBS  &  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1904,  by 

George  W.  Jacobs  &  Company, 

Published  August,  1904 


The  Letter  Establishing  the  Lectureship 

Bishop  Whitaker  presented  the  Letter  of  Endowment  of  the 
Lectureship  on  Christian  Sociology  from  Rev.  William  L. 
Bull  as  follows : 

For  many  years  it  has  been  my  earnest  desire  to  found  a 

'Lectureship    on    Christian    Sociology,  meaning  thereby  the 

application  of  Christian  principles  to  the  Social,  Industrial, 

and  Economic  problems  of  the  time,  in  my  Alma  Mater,  the 

Philadelphia  Divinity  School.      My  object  in  founding  this 

(\l  !  Lectureship  is  to  secure  the  free,  frank,  and  full  consideration 

;|  of  these  subjects,   with   special   reference   to   the   Christian 

I  aspects  of  the  question  involved,  which  have  heretofore,  in 

I  my  opinion,  been  too  much  neglected  in  such    discussiorj. 


O  I  It  would  seem  that  the  time  is  now  ripe  and  the  moment  an 
5  auspicious  one  for  the  establishment  of  this  Lectureship,  at 
§    least  tentatively. 

2         After  a  trial  of  three  years,  I  again  make  the  offer,  as  in 

**•    my  letter  of  January   1st,   1 901,  to  continue  these  Lectures 

**    for  a  period  of  three  years,  with  the  hope  that  they  may 

2    excite  such  an  interest,  particularly  among  the  undergraduates 

2     of  the  Divinity  School,  that  I  shall  be  justified,  with  the  ap- 

O    proval  of  the  authorities  of  the  Divinity  School,  in  placing 

\l^    the  Lectureship  on  a  more  permanent  foundation. 

5         I   herewith   pledge   myself  to  contribute  the  sum  of  six 

hundred  dollars  annually,  for  a  period  of  three  years,  to  the 

payment  of  a  lecturer  on  Christian  Sociology,  whose  duty  it 

shall  be  to  deliver  a  course  of  not  less  than  four  lectures  to 

the  students  of  the  Divinity  School,  either  at  the  school  or 

5 

432942 


elsewhere,  as  may  be  deemed  most  advisable,  on  the  appli- 
cation of  Christian  principles  to  the  Social,  Industrial,  and 
Economic  problems  and  needs  of  the  times ;  the  said  lecturer 
to  be  appointed  annually  by  a  committee  of  five  members : 
the  Bishop  of  the  Diocese  of  Pennsylvania  ;  the  Dean  of  the 
Divinity  School ;  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Overseers,  who 
shall  at  the  same  time  be  an  Alumnus ;  and  two  others,  one 
of  whom  shall  be  myself  and  the  other  chosen  by  the  pre- 
ceding four  members  of  the  committee. 

Furthermore,  if  it  shall  be  deemed  desirable  that  the  Lec- 
tures shall  be  published,  I  pledge  myself  to  the  additional 
payment  of  from  one  to  two  hundred  dollars  for  such  purpose. 

To  secure  a  full,  frank,  and  free  consideration  of  the  ques- 
tions involved,  it  is  my  desire  that  the  opportunity  shall  be 
given  from  time  to  time  to  the  representatives  of  each  school 
of  economic  thought  to  express  their  views  in  these  Lectures. 

The  only  restriction  I  wish  placed  on  the  lecturer  is  that 
he  shall  be  a  believer  in  the  moral  teachings  and  principles 
of  the  Christian  Religion  as  the  true  solvent  of  our  Social, 
Industrial,  and  Economic  problems.  Of  course,  it  is  my 
intention  that  a  new  lecturer  shall  be  appointed  by  the  com- 
mittee each  year,  who  shall  deliver  the  course  of  Lectures  for 
the  ensuing  year. 

WILLIAM  L.  BULL. 


Contents 


I.    The  Past 9 

Rev.  Washington  Gladden,  D.  D. 

II.    The  Corporation 67 

Talcott  Williams,  LL.  D. 

III.  The  Union 135 

Rev.  Geobge  Hodges,  D.  C  L. 

IV.  The  People 185 

Rev.  Francis  G.  Peabody,  LL.  D. 


I 

THE  PAST 
By  Rev.  Washington  Gladden,  D.  D. 


THE  PAST 

In  preparing  the  composite  picture  which 
this  brief  course  of  lectures  is  expected  to 
present,  the  task  which  has  been  assigned  to 
me  is  simply  that  of  painting  in  the  back- 
ground. It  is  not  an  unimportant  task,  for 
in  sociology  as  in  pictorial  art,  backgrounds 
are  of  great  significance  ;  and  it  is  a  task  of 
such  enormous  difficulty,  that  if  my  wits 
had  not  been  wool-gathering  when  it  was 
proposed  to  me  I  should  have  promptly  de- 
clined it.  In  an  unlucky  moment  for  me, 
and  for  you,  I  fear,  I  pledged  myself  to  it 
and  am  here  to-night  to  expiate  my  temerity. 
In  justice  to  myself  I  ought  to  warn  you 
that  the  work  assigned  to  me  is  a  sheer  im- 
possibility. To  set  before  you  within  the 
space  of  an  hour,  ever  so  cursorily,  the  past 
phases  of  the  labor   question  would  be  a 


12  The  Past 

much  more  difficult  undertaking  than  to 
repeat,  within  the  same  space  of  time,  the 
whole  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  To 
state,  in  any  adequate  way,  the  labor  ques- 
tion as  it  presented  itself  in  any  single  dec- 
ade of  the  past  two  thousand  years  would 
take  a  volume :  to  set  forth  the  multitudi- 
nous aspects  which  that  question  has  as- 
sumed since  the  toil  of  hand  and  brain  be- 
gan on  this  planet,  would  require  a  library. 
All  I  can  do  is  to  bring  before  you  a  few  of 
the  changes  which  have  taken  place  in  the 
condition  of  the  laborer  in  the  progress  of 
the  ages.  It  must  be  the  merest  sketch ; 
neither  in  outline  nor  in  shading  will  it 
satisfy  any  student  of  history.  But  it  may 
help  us  a  little  in  tracing  the  lines  of  social 
development,  in  valuing  the  gains  which 
have  been  made,  and  in  discerning  the  lines 
along  which  industrial  progress  is  likely  to 
move  in  the  years  before  us. 

For  the  primitive  forms  of  human  labor 
we  have  to  look  elsewhere  than  to  the 
records  of  history.     Men  had  been  at  work, 


The  Piisi  13 

probably,  for  many  scores  of  centuries  be- 
fore they  ever  made  any  permanent  record 
of  what  they  were  doing.  In  the  earliest 
periods  to  which  we  are  carried  by  the 
documents  and  the  monuments  of  old 
Egypt  and  of  the  ancient  Asiatic  mon- 
archies civilization  was  highly  organized ; 
the  division  of  labor  had  been  carried  far ; 
and  the  beginnings  of  industry  were  hid- 
den, even  then,  in  a  remote  past.  The 
lately  discovered  Code  of  Hammurabi, 
which  goes  back  to  the  twenty-third  cen- 
tury before  Christ,  names  many  classes  of 
laborers, — reapers,  threshers,  herdmen,  shep- 
herds, artisans,  brick  makers,  tailors,  stone- 
cutters, milkmen,  carpenters, — and  fixes 
the  daily  or  yearly  wages  to  be  paid  them 
by  their  employers.  None  of  the  oldest 
peoples  find  in  their  annals  any  trace  of  the 
earliest  stages  of  industrial  development. 

Archaeology,  with  its  collections  of  pre- 
historic implements,  gives  us  some  hints  of 
these  primitive  industries,  but  most  of  what 
we  suppose  that  we  know  is  inferred  from 


14  The  Past 

our  observation  of  the  condition  of  back- 
ward races  now  existing  upon  the  earth. 
From  these  sources  we  gather  what  seems  a 
fairly  credible  theory  of  the  stages  of  indus- 
trial progress. 

The  first  is  what  may  be  roughly  called 
the  hunting  stage,  in  which  labor  is  not 
productive  but  appropriative ;  in  which 
man  subsists  on  the  bounty  of  nature ;  on 
the  berries,  fruits,  nuts  and  roots  which  the 
earth  provides  him ;  on  the  fish  which  he 
takes  from  the  water,  and  on  the  flesh  of 
beasts  and  birds  which  he  ensnares.  The 
wages  question  has  not  yet  arisen,  for  every 
man  works  for  himself.  The  labor  consists 
in  the  gathering  of  the  wild  products  of  the 
earth  or  the  securing  of  fish  and  game ;  in 
the  preparation  of  skins  for  garments ;  in 
the  construction  of  rude  shelters  of  earth  or 
bark  ;  in  the  fashioning  of  tools,  or  weapons, 
from  flint  or  wood,  or  from  the  bones  of  an- 
imals. One  considerable  part  of  the  labor 
of  this  primitive  man  was  the  kindling  of 
fire  by  friction  ;  some  of  the  methods  for 


The  Past  15 

producing  flame  are  still  in  use  upon  this 
continent. 

How  long  the  earliest  tribes  remained  in 
this  first  industrial  stage  it  would  be  profit- 
less to  conjecture  ;  doubtless  for  long  periods, 
for  progress  in  such  times  is  vastly  slower 
than  under  the  conditions  with  which  we  are 
familiar.  In  the  order  of  nature — not  al- 
ways in  the  order  of  history — the  next  stage 
is  the  pastoral  stage,  in  which  animals  are 
domesticated  and  shepherded,  their  flesh 
and  their  milk  furnishing  a  less  precarious 
supply  of  food  than  that  obtained  in  the 
chase.  Now  wealth  began  to  be  accumu- 
lated in  flocks  and  herds ;  now  tents  were 
constructed  for  those  who  must  always  be 
leading  their  possessions  to  fresh  fields  and 
pastures  new ;  now  there  were  the  begin- 
nings of  manufacture — the  spinning  and 
weaving  of  sheep's  wool  and  camel's  hair. 
Now  there  was  division  of  labor,  and  wages 
for  shepherds  and  cowherds  and  swine- 
herds ;  the  labor  question  began  to  be 
articulate.     When  Jacob  comes  to  Laban's 


i6  The  Past 

house,  and  proposes  to  take  his  part  as 
a  shepherd  in  the  work  of  Laban's  house- 
hold, Laban  declines  to  accept  gratuitous 
services ;  he  desires  to  put  the  matter 
on  a  business  basis.  "  Because  thou  art  my 
brother,"  he  says,  ''  shouldest  thou  serve  me 
for  naught?  tell  me  what  shall  thy  wages 
be  ?  "  We  need  not  dwell  on  Jacob's  sharp 
bargain  ;  Laban's  question  shows  that  men 
in  the  pastoral  stage  worked  for  hire. 

Now,  also,  through  the  strifes  of  herds- 
men for  springs  and  fresh  pasturage  petty 
wars  arise  between  nomadic  tribes,  and 
slavery  follows  as  the  natural  sequence 
of  war.  Thus  in  the  pastoral  stages  we 
have  the  beginnings  of  enforced  and  unpaid 
labor ;  the  captives  in  war  are  not  all  slain  ; 
some  of  them  are  spared  and  reduced  to 
servitude,  in  tending  the  flocks  and  herds 
of  their  captors. 

The  pastoral  stage,  as  I  have  intimated, 
may  not  always  directly  follow  the  hunting 
stage ;  there  are  countries,  like  Australia, 
where  none  of  the  native  animals  are  suit- 


TTie  Past  17 

able  for  domestication.  In  such  cases  the 
agricultural  stage  must  precede  the  pastoral 
stage,  instead  of  following  it.  In  the  course 
of  time  economic  necessities  are  sure  to 
compel  a  more  settled  manner  of  life  and 
the  cultivation  of  the  soil.  For  hunting 
purposes  vast  areas  are  needed  for  the  sub- 
sistence of  a  few  ;  even  the  pastoral  life  com- 
pels large  room  and  wide  wanderings ;  but 
when  labor  is  applied  to  the  soil  a  small 
tract  will  furnish  abundant  and  varied  sup- 
plies for  the  wants  of  many  people.  Agri- 
culture begins,  of  course,  on  a  very  rude 
scale  ;  it  is  mingled  more  or  less  with  the  life 
of  the  hunting  and  pastoral  tribes  ;  it  is  long 
before  it  becomes  the  main  reliance  of  any 
people  ;  but  little  by  little  men  forsake  their 
wild  and  wandering  life,  and  settle  upon 
the  land,  build  permanent  dwellings,  and 
develop  their  social  life  and  their  polit- 
ical institutions.  The  land  is  not,  in  the 
beginning,  held  in  severalty  ;  there  is  com- 
munal ownership  regulated  by  the  heads  of 
the  village  community.     At  first  the  village 


i8  The  Past 

rulers  changed  every  year  the  lots  assigned 
to  culture,  but  gradually  the  several  families 
came  to  occupy  the  same  ground  with  more 
or  less  permanency,  and  foundations  were 
laid  for  the  principle  of  private  ownership. 

With  this  more  settled  manner  of  life  the 
arts  of  husbandry  more  rapidly  developed, 
new  tools  were  invented,  methods  of  culti- 
vation were  improved,  there  were  great  me- 
liorations in  the  conditions  of  human  life. 
But  between  these  settled  groups  and  those 
more  restless  and  aggressive  there  were 
constant  collisions  ;  the  rich  lands  tempted 
the  wild  tribes ;  the  growing  communities 
needed  new  fields  and  their  expansion  led 
to  encroachment  on  neighboring  territory  ; 
war  thus  became  a  chronic  condition  of  so- 
ciety, and  slavery  was  the  inseparable  con- 
comitant of  war.  Captives  were  enslaved  ; 
and  the  servile  classes  among  all  the 
stronger  peoples  multiplied  far  more  rapidly 
than  any  other  class  in  the  population. 

At  the  beginnings  of  what  we  may  fairly 
call  history  we  find  therefore  that  the  larg- 


The  Past  19 

est  share  of  the  working  classes  are  slaves. 
In  Egypt  the  nobles  and  the  priests  form 
the  ruling  class,  to  all  of  whom  every  kind 
of  manual  labor  is  utterly  forbidden.  At 
the  opposite  social  extreme  are  the  slaves  by 
whom  all  the  agricultural  work  is  done,  and 
the  shepherds,  scarcely  separated  from  them 
in  condition.  There  is  also  a  middle  class 
of  artisans,  of  small  social  consequence  in 
the  early  periods,  but  gradually  gaining  a 
little  more  recognition  upon  the  monu- 
ments. In  the  later  Empire  when  the 
Kings  began  to  cherish  great  architectural 
ambitions  frequent  raids  were  made  by 
Egyptian  armies  into  Asia  and  into  the 
regions  to  the  south  of  Egypt,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  bringing  back  hordes  of  captives 
to  work  upon  the  Pyramids.  While,  there- 
fore, skilled  artisans  must  have  been  needed 
in  the  direction  of  this  work,  the  result  of  it 
must  have  been  greatly  to  increase  the  slave 
population. 

In  the  great  days  of  Greece  its  civilization 
was    built     on     slavery.     In    the    earliest 


20  The  Past 

historic  times  there  were  hereditary  slaves, 
but  the  number  of  these  did  not  increase 
by  propagation  rapidly  enough  to  supply 
the  constantly  growing  demand  for  labor, 
so  that  the  slave  population  had  to  be  re- 
plenished from  various  sources.  Children 
were  sold  into  bondage  by  their  free 
parents  ;  captives  taken  in  war  were  doomed 
to  slavery ;  even  Greeks,  captured  in  civil 
wars,  were  not  exempt  from  this  fate.  By 
piracy  and  kidnapping  the  bondmen  were 
multiplied,  and  a  flourishing  slave  trade 
brought  from  Italy  and  from  Africa  and 
from  the  provinces  of  Asia  Minor  a  con- 
stant supply  to  the  slave  markets  of  the 
Grecian  Peninsula. 

The  servile  population  of  Greece  is  va- 
riously estimated  by  the  historians,  but  the 
best  authorities  agree  that  there  must  have 
been  three  slaves  for  every  freeman.  Not 
only  the  menial  work  of  the  fields  and  the 
homes  was  performed  by  slaves,  but  much 
of  the  skilled  mechanical  work.  Slaves 
were  household  managers,  and  superintend- 


The  Past  21 

ents  of  farms  ;  in  commerce  as  well  as  in  man- 
ufactures slave  labor  was  emplo3'ed.  There 
were  speculators  who  owned  them  and 
trained  them  and  hired  them  out ;  the  cities 
were  slaveholders ;  the  public  work  was 
done  by  slaves ;  Athens  kept  twelve  hun- 
dred of  them  as  policemen  ;  they  served  in 
the  fleets  and  in  the  armies  as  drudges,  not 
often  as  soldiers. 

In  Rome  the  institution  was  systematized 
and  extended  until  it  became  the  main  sup- 
port of  the  social  order.  In  the  earliest 
days  this  slavery  appears  to  have  been  of  a 
mild  and  humane  type  ;  but  in  the  later 
years  of  the  Republic  and  in  the  beginning 
of  the  Empire,  when  the  power  of  Rome  was 
expanding,  every  successful  war  added  tens 
of  thousands  of  slaves  to  the  population,  and 
as  their  numbers  grew  the  degradation  of 
the  bondmen  waxed  deeper  and  more  dire. 
"  In  Epirus,"  says  Dr.  Ingram,  "  after  the 
victories  of  ^milius  Paulus,  150,000  cap- 
tives were  sold.  The  prisoners  at  Aquae 
Sextise  and  Vercillee  were  90,000   Teutons 


22  The  Past 

and  60,000  Cimbri.  Csesar  sold  on  a  single 
occasion  in  Gaul  63,000  captives  ;  Augustus 
made  44,000  prisoners  in  the  country  of  the 
Sallassi  ;  after  immense  numbers  had  per- 
ished by  famine  and  hardship  and  in  the 
combats  of  the  arena,  97,000  slaves  were 
acquired  by  the  Jewish  war."  ^ 

When  most  of  the  able-bodied  male  citi- 
zens were  marching  around  the  world  in 
the  conquering  armies  of  the  world's 
mistress,  it  was  needful  that  somebody 
should  do  the  work  at  home,  and  the 
Roman  conquests  furnished  the  labor  by 
means  of  which  the  industries  of  the  nation 
were  carried  forward.  But  in  Rome,  as  in 
Greece,  the  supply  of  captives  was  inadequate 
for  industrial  purposes,  and  a  vast  slave- 
trade  in  which  piracy  and  slave-catchers 
co-operated,  swelled  the  ranks  of  the  bond- 
men. In  Rome,  during  the  first  two  cen- 
turies of  the  Empire,  fully  three-fourths  of 
the  population  were  slaves. 

Rome  was  the  great  organizer,  and  her 

'  Eucyclopedia  Britaunica,  XXII,  132. 


The  Past  23 

slaves  were  regimented,  and  trained  and 
carefully  fitted  into  her  industrial  life. 
There  were  public  slaves  and  private  slaves. 
Many  of  the  humbler  offices  of  the  State 
were  filled  by  them  ;  they  built  the  roads, 
they  cleansed  the  sewers,  they  maintained 
the  aqueducts.  Every  rich  private  citizen 
had  multitudes  of  slaves  for  all  industrial 
and  domestic  purposes,  and  for  the  service 
of  his  higher  needs.  "  The  slaves  of  a  pri- 
vate Roman,"  says  Ingram,  *'  were  divided 
between  the  familia  rustica  and  the  familia 
urbana.  At  the  head  of  the  familia  rustica 
was  the  villicus,  himself  a  slave,  with  the 
wife  who  had  been  given  him  to  aid  him 
and  to  bind  him  to  his  duties.  Under  him 
were  the  several  groups  employed  in  the 
different  branches  of  the  exploitation  and 
the  care  of  the  cattle  and  the  flocks,  as  well 
as  those  who  kept  or  prepared  the  food, 
clothing,  and  tools  of  the  whole  staff", 
and  those  who  attended  the  master  in  the 
various  species  of  rural  sports.  A  slave 
prison  {ergastulum)  was  part  of  such  an  es- 


24  The  Past 

tablishment,  and  there  were  slaves  whose 
office  it  was  to  punish  the  offenses  of  their 
fellows.  To  the  familia  urbana  belonged 
those  who  discharged  the  duties  of  domestic 
attendance  ;  the  service  of  the  toilet,  of  the 
bath,  of  the  table,  of  the  kitchen,  besides 
the  entertainment  of  the  master  and  his 
guests  by  dancing,  singing,  and  other  arts. 
There  were,  besides,  the  slaves  who  ac- 
companied the  master  and  mistress  out  of 
doors  and  who  were  chosen  for  their  beauty 
and  grace  as  guards  of  honor,  for  their 
strength  as  chairmen  or  porters,  or  for  their 
readiness  and  address  in  remembering 
names,  delivering  messages  of  courtesy,  and 
the  like.  There  were  also  attached  to  a 
great  household,  physicians,  artists,  secreta- 
ries, librarians,  copyists,  preparers  of  parch- 
ment, as  well  as  pedagogues  and  preceptors 
of  different  kinds — readers,  grammarians, 
men  of  letters  and  even  philosophers — all  of 
servile  condition,  besides  accountants,  mana- 
gers, and  agents  for  the  transaction  of  busi- 
ness.    Actors,  comic  and  tragic,  pantomimi. 


The  Past  25 

and  the  performers  of  the  circus,  were  com- 
monly slaves,  as  were  also  the  gladiators. 
These  last  were  chosen  from  the  most  war- 
like races,  as  the  Samnites,  Gauls  and  Thra- 
cians.  Familise  of  gladiators  were  kept  by 
private  speculators  who  hired  them  out ; 
they  were  sometimes  owned  by  men  of  high 
rank."  ^ 

Upon  this  stupendous  institution  of 
slavery  which  has  dominated  the  industrial 
realm  during  the  greater  part  of  the  historic 
period,  and  which  came  to  its  culmination 
in  the  Roman  Empire,  it  is  not  possible  to 
dwell.  It  is  only  necessary  to  remember 
that  when  Jesus  was  born  in  Bethlehem  of 
Judea  the  vast  majority  of  all  the  people  of 
the  most  civilized  lands  were  slaves :  that 
almost  the  whole  of  the  manual  work  of  the 
world  was  done  by  slaves,  and  much  of  its 
commercial  and  educational  and  artistic 
work  ;  that  all  these  people  by  whom  the 
world's  work  was  done  were  regarded  by 
philosophers  and  legists  as  something  less 

'  Encyclopedia  Britannioa,  XXII,  132. 


26  The  Past 

than  human.  It  was  not  because  they  be- 
longed to  a  different  race,  for  usually 
they  were  of  the  same  kindred  and 
the  same  color  as  their  masters ;  by  the 
very  condition  of  slavery  manhood  was 
extinguished.  No  matter  by  what  injustice 
or  cruelty  the  man  had  been  enslaved,  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  slave  proved  that  he  was 
no  man.  It  is  astonishing  to  read  in  the 
philosophical  discussions  of  Plato  and  Aris- 
totle and  Cicero  and  Cato  their  reasonings 
about  the  servile  condition.  Their  cool  as- 
sumption that  a  slave  is  a  slave  by  nature  ; 
that  he  is  born  to  this  destiny  ;  that  slavery 
is  a  political  necessity,  since  no  man  who 
works  for  a  livelihood  could  be  fit  for  citi- 
zenship— that  would  be  fatal  to  the  State ; 
and  in  order  that  there  may  be  free  citizens 
to  rule  the  State  there  must  be  slaves  to  sup- 
port them  in  idleness.  All  such  arguments, 
put  forth  with  no  dubitation  by  the  most 
enlightened  men,  indicate  the  social  condi- 
tion of  the  working  people  of  the  world  at 
about  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 


The  Past  27 

Concerning  the  treatment  of  the  slaves  by 
their  masters  no  sweeping  statement  could 
be  made.  The  theory  of  slavery  was  bad 
enough,  as  we  have  seen,  to  warrant  any 
amount  of  cruelty,  but  men  are  sometimes 
better  than  their  theories ;  and  between 
Roman  masters  and  their  slaves,  as  between 
masters  and  slaves  in  our  own  country  and 
our  own  time,  there  were  instances  of  kind- 
liness and  affection.  Manumission  was  not 
uncommon,  the  class  of  freedmen  increased 
in  numbers  and  rose  in  influence.  But 
after  making  due  account  of  ameliorating 
influences,  the  condition  of  the  Roman  slave 
under  the  Empire  was  undoubtedly  far 
worse  than  the  worst  of  our  African  slavery 
upon  this  continent.  Upon  the  latifundia 
the  field  hands  worked  and  slept  in  chains ; 
sick  slaves  were  cast  out  to  die  ;  Cato  the 
Wise,  the  moralist  and  reformer,  advises 
agriculturists  to  get  rid  of  their  worn-out 
slaves  as  of  their  old  oxen  ;  in  the  mines 
they  wrought  under  the  lash,  and  guarded 
by   soldiers ;    worst   of  all    they  were  kept 


28  The  Past 

by  purveyors  of  bestial  pleasure  as  gladiators 
and  as  prostitutes  and  devoted  to  lives  of 
savagery  and  of  shame. 

The  brutalizing  effect  of  such  relations 
upon  the  lives  of  the  ruling  class  can  hardly 
be  exaggerated.  One  typical  fact  will  throw 
light  upon  the  Roman  character — the  cus- 
tom of  enlivening  the  banquets  of  the  rich 
with  the  combats  of  gladiators.  Your  host 
assumed  that  your  anchovies  would  have  a 
better  relish  and  your  wine  a  finer  flavor  if 
you  could  see  one  man  cut  another  man's 
throat  or  stab  him  to  the  heart  while  you 
were  partaking  of  his  feast ! 

"  What  a  society  was  this  of  Rome,"  ex- 
claims Dr.  Schmidt,  **  tolerating  orgies 
where  the  blood  of  slaves  mingled  with  the 
wine  of  their  flower-crowned  masters,  where 
mortal  combats  mingled  with  impure 
pantomime,  where  the  guests  were  offered 
in  turns  the  grimaces  of  actors,  the  carnage 
of  gladiators  and  the  kisses  of  courtesans — 
where,  indeed,  the  most  monstrous  cruelty 
was  allied  with  the  most  shameless  liber- 


The  Past  29 

tinisni !  "  ^  It  was  such  a  society  as  slavery 
is  sure  to  produce.  The  seeds  of  its  disso- 
lution had  been  thickly  sown,  and  the  crop 
was  soon  ripe  for  the  harvesting.  Slavery 
and  the  Empire  went  down  together. 

To  such  a  people  the  end  of  conquest 
must  come.  Their  vices  brought  debility 
and  effeminacy,  and  their  enfeebled  legions 
melted  before  the  power  of  more  vigorous 
races.  War  ceased  to  supply  captives,  and 
servile  insurrections  made  the  tenure  of 
slave  property  precarious.  The  masters 
were  not  strong  enough  to  coerce  the  slaves, 
and  the  institution  upon  which  the  whole 
economic  life  of  the  Empire  was  founded 
showed  signs  everywhere  of  falling  beneath 
its  own  weight. 

What  was  the  labor  question  in  these  old 
Roman  days  ?  It  was  not  the  wages  ques- 
tion, for  the  free  men  who  worked  for 
wages  were  few  and  utterly  despised,  even 
by  the  slaves.  It  was  not  the  question 
about  hours   of  labor  or  the  right   of  the 

'  "  The  Social  Results  of  Early  Christianity,"  p.  95. 


30  The  Past 

laborers  to  organize.  On  the  part  of  the 
masters  it  was  the  question,  ''  How  can  we 
compel  these  chattels  of  ours  to  serve  our 
needs  and  our  whims  ?  "  On  the  part  of 
the  slaves  it  was  the  question,  **  How  can  we 
safely  evade  the  toil  that  springs  from  no 
impulse  and  brings  no  recompense  ? " 
Portentous  questions  these,  when  they  re- 
veal the  ruling  motives  of  the  classes  con- 
cerned in  industrial  production.  Could  any 
sane  man  conceive  that  human  society 
could  be  held  together  with  such  deadly 
antagonisms  at  the  heart  of  it? 

Slavery  in  Europe  was  doomed,  but  it 
took  the  owners  of  the  slaves  several  genera- 
tions to  find  it  out.  Gradually  the  fact  be- 
came evident  that  an  industrial  system 
which  makes  your  workman  your  natural 
enemy  is  economically  unsound  ;  and  the 
sentiments  of  Christianity  slowly  permeated 
the  minds  of  men  and  helped  to  create  an 
atmosphere  in  which  slavery  could  not  live. 
A  radical  and  immediate  change  from 
slavery  to  free  contract   would    have  been 


The  Past  31 

impossible,  in  that  society ;  we  have  seen 
how  difficult  it  is  in  our  own,  with  all  the 
laws  and  social  institutions  organized  in  the 
interests  of  freedom.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
it  was  absolutely  needful  that  the  transition 
should  be  gradual ;  and  thus,  in  a  process 
which  I  cannot  stop  to  outline,  slavery  was 
gradually  merged  in  serfdom ;  and  the 
millions  who  had  been  chattels  along  with 
many  others  who  had  had  the  name,  and 
little  more  than  the  name,  of  free  laborers, 
found  themselves  tied  to  the  soil,  as  coloni, 
or  serfs,  with  some  larger  measure  of  per- 
sonal liberty  than  slaves  had  enjoyed,  but 
still  only  half  free.  The  owner  of  the  land 
could  not  sell  them,  nor  drive  them  from 
their  homes,  nor  could  they,  on  the  other 
hand,  run  away  ;  if  they  did,  the  master 
could  bring  them  back.  Generally  they 
were  required  to  pay  him  a  portion,  fixed 
by  law,  of  the  product  of  the  land  which  had 
been  assigned  to  them  ;  and  they  owed  to 
him  also  a  certain  yearly  amount  of  labor 
upon  the  land  which  he  kept  for  his  own 


32  The  Past 

purposes.  The  rent  dues  and  the  labor  dues 
could  not  be  increased  by  the  master.  Ad- 
scripti  glebpc,  these  laborers  were  called  ;  they 
were  tenants  registered  by  the  State  and 
fastened  forever  to  the  same  spot  of  earth ; 
for  them  there  was  no  freedom  of  move- 
ment and  no  choice  of  occupation.  The 
serf  could  not  marry  a  wife  who  belonged 
on  another  estate  ;  his  children  were  tethered 
to  the  same  soil  ;  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion the  family  was  "  fixed  in  an  eternal 
state,"  as  the  hymn  says  ;  that,  indeed,  was 
the  very  term  used  respecting  the  perma- 
nency of  their  tenure  by  an  old  law  of 
Theodosius,  "  quodam  eternitatis  jure.'"  The 
title  of  the  property  might  pass  from  owner 
to  owner  but  the  serf  remained  ;  lords  might 
come  and  lords  might  go  but  he  stayed  on 
forever. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  agricultural  classes, 
but  similar  relations  existed  also  in  the 
towns  and  cities ;  most  laboring  men  in  the 
urban  communities  were  attached  in  the 
same  way  to  masters,  as  menials  or  retain- 


The  Past  33 

ers.  It  seemed  to  be  the  natural  thing  for 
the  working  man  to  be  dependent  upon  and 
subject  to  somebody  above  him  ;  for  protec- 
tion and  guidance  the  weak  gathered  about 
the  strong  and  submitted  to  their  control. 
The  feudal  system  was  built  upon  this 
idea  of  the  subjection  of  the  many  to  the 
few. 

Yet  it  was  evident  that  this  condition  of 
serfdom  was  transitional.  It  was  a  stage  in 
advance  of  slavery,  but  it  was  still  at  war 
with  the  best  elements  of  human  nature, 
and  with  all  that  is  most  vital  in  the 
Christian  religion.  The  beginning  of  the 
end  of  it  came  when  little  groups  of  arti- 
sans in  the  free  cities  bound  themselves  to- 
gether for  mutual  aid  and  protection.  Fugi- 
tives from  the  manors  swelled  their  number, 
and  charters  from  the  King  confirmed  their 
rights.  The  monarch,  reaching  over  the 
heads  of  the  lesser  lords,  found  his  interest 
in  strengthening  these  unions  of  free  work- 
ing men  ;  they  increased  his  revenues  and 
broadened  the  basis  of  his  authority.    Little 


34  The  Past 

by  little,  in  all  the  European  countries, 
though  in  some  much  more  slowly  than  in 
others,  serfdom  crumbled  away.  The  work- 
men in  the  cities  first  won  their  freedom  ; 
afterwards  their  fellow  toilers  on  the  land 
were  loosened  from  their  bond.  Three 
great  causes,  political,  economical,  ethical, 
conspired  for  their  deliverance.  The  Kings, 
as  we  have  seen,  wished  the  support  of  the 
common  people  for  their  thrones  ;  the  mas- 
ters began  to  see  that  a  freeman  is  likely  to 
be  a  better  workman  than  a  bondman  ;  the 
preachers  of  Christianity  kept  bearing  wit- 
ness that  all  men  in  God's  sight  Avere  equal. 
In  all  these  years  when  the  bondmen  were 
tied  to  the  soil  there  was  only  one  sure  way 
in  which  they  could  escape ;  if  the  bishop 
laid  his  hand  on  a  serf  in  ordination,  his 
master  could  not  interpose.  The  mediaeval 
church,  with  all  her  sins  and  shortcomings, 
did  yet  steadily  and  mightily  testify  against 
human  bondage.  Within  her  pale  there 
have  never  been  any  barriers  of  caste : 
there  never  was  a  day  when  a  slave  or  a 


The  Past  35 

serf  might  not  aspire  to  the  highest  honor 
within  her  gift. 

As  the  result  of  all  these  conspiring  causes, 
serfdom  gradually  disappeared  from  Europe. 
In  England  it  was  moribund  in  the  thir- 
teenth century,  and  defunct  in  the  fifteenth  ; 
in  France  it  lingered  and  the  last  remnants 
of  it  were  swept  away  by  the  Revolution  of 
1789  ;  in  Germany  it  was  not  wholly  extir- 
pated when  the  nineteenth  century  began, 
and  in  Russia  its  death-knell  was  sounded 
in  1861. 

What  was  the  labor  question  in  Europe, 
during  the  centuries  of  serfdom  ?  On  the 
part  of  the  master  it  was  mainly  the 
question  how  his  workman  could  be  kept  in 
his  place  as  the  member  of  an  inferior  class, 
how  the  restrictions  upon  his  liberty  could 
be  maintained  and  enforced,  how  he  could 
be  coerced  into  rendering  service  to  those 
above  him  in  the  social  scale.  On  the  part 
of  the  workman  it  was  the  question  how  he 
could  evade  the  burdens  laid  upon  him,  and 
reduce  the  amount  of  his  compulsory  labor ; 


36  The  Past 

also,  doubtless,  as  the  centuries  wore  on, 
and  some  sense  of  the  primal  rights  of  a 
man  began  to  dawn  upon  the  minds  of  these 
bondmen,  the  question  began  to  arise  in  the 
thoughts  of  some  of  them  why  the  laborer 
should  not  have  the  right  to  choose  his  own 
employer  and  his  own  employment ;  why 
the  men  who  do  the  world's  work  should 
not  be  freemen  ? 

It  is  interesting  to  watch  the  sowing  of 
these  seeds  of  revolt  in  the  minds  of  the 
common  people  of  England,  in  the  middle 
of  the  fifteenth  century.  It  was  closely 
connected  with  a  great  religious  movement — 
a  movement  which  shook  England  to  its 
centre,  and  which,  although  for  awhile  re- 
pressed, a  century  later  issued  in  the  Refor- 
mation. It  was  the  teaching  of  John  Wyclif 
which  gave  the  coup  de  grace  to  serfdom  in 
England.  It  was  his  Doctrine  of  Dominion, 
in  which  he  taught  that  priest  and  king  and 
proprietor  get  their  rights  and  powers  di- 
rectly from  God,  and  are  responsible  to 
Him,  which  swept  away  the  foundations  of 


The  Past  37 

feudalism  as  well  as  of  sacramentalism.  It 
was  the  throngs  of  poor  priests  in  their  rus- 
set gowns,  who  went  everywhere  preaching 
the  gospel  of  a  secular  and  a  religious  de- 
mocracy that  stirred  up  the  peasant  revolt. 
"  Wyclif 's  poor  priests,"  says  Thorold  Rogers, 
"  had  honeycombed  the  minds  of  the  up- 
land-folk with  what  may  be  called  religious 
socialism.  By  Wyclif 's  labors  the  Bible 
men  had  been  introduced  to  the  new  world 
of  the  Old  Testament,  to  the  history  of  the 
human  race,  to  the  primeval  garden  and  the 
young  world,  where  the  first  parents  of  all 
mankind  lived  by  simple  toil,  and  were  the 
ancestors  of  the  proud  noble  and  knight  as 
well  as  of  the  down-trodden  serf  and  de- 
spised burgher.  They  read  of  the  brave 
times  when  there  was  no  King  in  Israel, 
when  every  man  did  that  which  was  right 
in  his  own  eyes,  and  sat  under  his  own  vine 
and  fig-tree,  none  daring  to  make  him 
afraid."  ^  Here  is  a  sample  of  this  preach- 
ing— a  bit  of  one  of  the  sermons  of  John 

'  "Six  Centuries  of  Work  and  Wages,"  p.  254. 

432942 


38  The  Past 

Ball,  the  "  mad  priest  of  Kent,"  as  Froissart 
calls  him  :  "  Good  people,  things  will  never 
go  well  in  England  so  long  as  goods  be  not 
in  common,  and  so  long  as  there  be  villeins 
(serfs)  and  gentlemen.  By  what  right  are 
they  whom  we  call  lords  greater  folk  than 
we  ?  On  what  grounds  have  they  deserved 
it  ?  Why  do  they  hold  us  in  serfage  ?  If 
we  all  came  of  the  same  father  and  mother, 
of  Adam  and  Eve,  how  can  they  say  or 
prove  that  they  are  better  than  we,  if  it  l^e 
not  that  they  make  us  gain  for  them  by  our 
toil  what  they  spend  on  their  pride.  They 
are  clothed  in  velvet,  and  warm  in  their 
furs  and  ermines,  while  we  are  covered  with 
rags.  They  have  wine  and  spices  and  fair 
bread,  and  we  oat-cake  and  straw,  and  water 
to  drink.  They  have  leisure  and  fine  houses ; 
we  have  pain  and  labor,  the  rain  and  the 
wind  in  the  fields.  And  yet  it  is  of  us  and 
of  our  toil  that  these  men  hold  their  state." 
The  days  of  the  cartoonist  were  not  yet 
but  the  rhymers  had  their  innings  in  the 
fourteenth  century.     Listen  to  them  : 


The  Past  39 

"  Now  reigneth  pride  in  price, 
And  covetise  is  counted  wise, 
And  lechery  withouten  shame. 
And  gluttony  withouten  blame. 
Envy  reigneth  with  treason, 
And  sloth  is  take  in  great  season, 
God  do  bote,  for  now  is  time. ' ' 

Jack  the  Miller  croons  his  ditty  : 

' '  With  right  and  with  might. 
With  skill  and  with  will, 
Let  might  help  right, 
And  skill  go  before  will. 
And  right  before  might, 
So  goeth  our  mill  aright." 

''Right  before  might"  must  mean  the 
doom  of  bondage.  And  how  can  serfdom 
stand  when  a  rhyme  like  this  is  running 
round  the  land  : 

"  When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span, 
Who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?  " 

These  were  the  brands  which  kindled  the 
Peasant's  Revolt,  which  was  speedily 
stamped  out  but  which,  in  the  midst  of 
seeming  defeat,  won  an  immediate  and 
complete  victory.  Like  John  Brown's  mad 
enterprise  it  was  an  ignominious  failure  ; 
but,  also  like  that  failure,  out  of  its  ashes 


40  The  Past 

burst  a  flame  that  swept  serfdom  out  of  ex- 
istence. Parliament  peremptorily  refused 
manumission  to  the  peasants,  and  imme- 
diately began  to  loosen  the  bonds  and  let 
the  oppressed  go  free.  The  cry  of  humanity 
had  found  articulate  voice,  and  the  end  had 
come  to  the  system  of  enforced  labor  in 
England. 

Thus  we  have  seen  "  the  highway  lifted  up 
over  which  the  laboring  classes  of  Europe," 
in  the  phrase  of  Sir  Henry  Maine,  "  passed 
from  status  to  contract."  From  the  end  of 
the  fourteenth  century  in  England,  and 
froiTL  later  dates  in  other  European  coun- 
tries, we  see  the  working  man  choosing  his 
own  occupation,  his  own  place  of  residence, 
and  his  own  employer.  He  has  ceased  to 
be  a  chattel  or  a  dependent,  and  has  become 
in  theory  at  least,  and  to  a  large  degree  in 
fact,  a  freeman.  In  feudal  countries  the 
classes  above  him  for  a  long  time  retain 
privileges  which  he  has  not ;  he  has  little 
or  no  part  in  the  government  of  his  coun- 
try ;  the  avenues  to  honor  are  largely  closed 


The  Past  41 

against  him,  but  except  for  crime  he  cannot 
be  compelled  to  work  against  his  will ;  he 
makes  his  own  bargain  with  his  employer ; 
he  is  free  to  go  where  he  will  and  to  expend 
the  wages  of  his  labor  for  what  seems  to 
him  good.  It  is  true  that  there  are  at- 
tempts, sometimes  mischievous  and  inju- 
rious, to  establish  by  law  the  rate  of  wages ; 
but  these  professed  to  fix,  and  probably 
were  meant  to  fix,  a  minimum  wage,  for 
the  laborer's  protection. 

The  tremendous  importance  of  this  change 
in  his  condition  it  is  not  possible  for  those 
of  us  who  have  been  accustomed  all  our 
lives  to  a  regime  of  free  labor  rightly  to  es- 
timate. The  spur  that  was  given  to  indus- 
try and  thrift  by  the  emancipation  of  the 
serfs  in  England,  was  felt  in  every  part  of 
the  Commonwealth.  Thorold  Rogers  says 
that  the  century  and  a  quarter  following  the 
Peasant's  Revolt,  or  the  fifteenth  and  the 
first  quarter  of  the  sixteenth  century,  was 
the  golden  age  of  the  English  laborer  ;  that 
at  no  time,  before  or  since,  have  the  labor- 


42  The  Past 

er's  wages  procured  for  him  so  much  of  the 
necessaries  of  life ;  that  at  no  time  have 
wages,  relatively  speaking,  been  so  high,  and 
food  so  cheap.^ 

From  this  day  onward,  until  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  condition  of 
the  laboring  classes  was  substantially  un- 
changed. Artisans  in  the  towns  and  labor- 
ers on  the  farms  pursued  their  occupations; 
industries  were  developed  ;  trades  were  per- 
fected ;  manufactories  steadily  advanced. 
The  iron  business  began  to  assume  large 
proportions ;  the  woollen  business  offered 
employment  to  large  numbers  of  men  and 
women,  who  spun  the  wool  on  their  spin- 
ning wheels  at  home,  and  wove  it  upon  hand 
looms.  The  domestic  industries,  as  they 
are  called,  were  flourishing,  and  although 
the  condition  of  the  toiler  was  by  no  means 
uniformly  enviable,  and  bad  harvests  often 
brought  famine,  the  working  classes  kept  on 
the  even  tenor  of  their  way,  making  no  im- 
portant social  or  political  gains,  but  certainly 

^  "  Six  Centuries  of  Work  aud  Wages,"  p.  326. 


The  Past  43 

holding  their  own,  and  rising,  perhaps,  in 
the  respect  and  consideration  of  the  classes 
above  them. 

The  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century- 
found  the  wage-workers  upon  the  threshold 
of  that  industrial  revolution  which  is  still  in 
progress,  whose  vast  consequences  already  ex- 
perienced are  sufficiently  portentous ;  whose 
future  overturnings  no  prophet  can  foretell. 

The  domestic  system  of  industry  to  which 
I  have  referred  was  fully  intrenched  at  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  was 
properly  called  a  domestic  system,  not  only 
because  nearly  all  the  mechanical  work  was 
done  in  the  homes  of  the  people,  and  was 
united  more  or  less  with  agricultural  work, 
most  mechanics  living  in  rural  homes,  and 
raising  a  good  share  of  their  own  food,  but 
also  because  most  of  it  was  done  for  the 
home  market,  the  foreign  trade  at  that  time 
being  an  insignificant  portion  of  the  business 
of  the  great  European  nations.  Each  neigh- 
borhood, in  fact,  produced  most  of  the  sim- 
ple supplies  needed  by  its  people  ;  the  means 


44  The  Past 

of  communication,  even  in  England,  were 
so  imperfect  that  the  products  of  one  part 
of  the  country  were  with  difficulty  trans- 
ported to  other  parts. 

The  first  step  in  the  great  march  of  in- 
dustry was  taken  when  canals  opened  the 
way  for  exchanges  of  products,  and  liberated 
trade  from  one  of  its  fetters. 

Then,  one  after  another,  came  the  great 
inventions — the  spinning  jenny,  the  flying 
shuttle,  the  mule,  the  power  loom,  the  steam 
engine,  with  railways  and  steamships,  and 
the  vast  development  of  the  coal  industry, 
furnishing  greatly  augmented  power,  which 
could  be  used  in  any  locality ;  so  that  the 
strength  of  man  was  indefinitely  multiplied, 
and  the  applications  of  natural  force  to 
simple  processes  of  manufacture,  under  the 
principle  of  the  division  of  labor,  made  way 
for  that  astounding  development  of  indus- 
trial organization  which  has  been  going  for- 
ward during  the  past  century  and  a  half,  by 
leaps  and  bounds,  and  which  shows  no  signs 
of  reaching  its  culmination. 


The  Past  45 

Rapidly  the  entire  system  of  production 
was  revolutionized  ;  the  domestic  industries 
gave  place  to  the  factory  system ;  men  and 
women  and  children  were  drawn  away  from 
their  rural  homes  to  great  manufacturing 
centres,  and  the  social  as  well  as  the  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  working  people  assumed 
new  phases,  not  always  of  the  most  hopeful 
character. 

This  change  from  the  domestic  system  of 
industry  to  what  may  be  called  the  factory 
system,  with  its  massing  of  laborers  in  indus- 
trial centres,  with  its  great  specialization  of 
processes,  and  its  regimentation  of  workers, 
with  its  increasing  consolidation  of  kindred 
industries,  and  its  enormous  aggregations  of 
capital,  is  a  phenomenon  whose  entire  sig- 
nificance no  social  philosopher  of  our  time 
can  confidently  estimate.  It  has  affected, 
already,  in  many  ways,  the  entire  social 
fabric.  We  are  living  in  a  different  world 
from  that  which  was  moving  in  the  same 
orbit  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago ;  the 
conditions  of  life  in  the  most  civilized  por- 


4^  The  Pdst 

tions  of  it  have  greatl}^  changed,  and  men 
have  changed  not  less  than  the  times.  It  may 
be  said  that  human  nature  does  not  change, 
but  the  customary  thoughts  and  feelings 
and  hopes  and  fears  of  human  beings  may 
greatly  change  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion ;  and  the  ruling  ideas  and  motives  of 
the  working  classes  and  of  those  who 
employ  them  have  been  considerably  modi- 
fied since  the  invention  of  the  spinning 
jenny. 

It  is  impossible  in  the  time  now  at  my 
disposal  even  to  hint  at  the  transformations 
which  have  been  going  on  in  the  industrial 
world  during  this  period.  The  earlier 
stages  of  the  new  industry  were  not  encour- 
aging to  the  friends  of  humanity.  The 
social  and  moral  conditions  of  the  laborers, 
hurled  together  in  the  new  manufacturing 
centres  were  deplorable.  In  Mr.  Hobson's 
words :  "  The  requirements  of  a  decent, 
healthy,  harmonious  individual  or  civic  life 
played  no  appreciable  part  in  the  rapid 
transformation  of  the  mediaeval  residential 


The  Past  47 

centre  or  the  scattered  industrial  village 
into  the  modern  manufacturing  town.  Con- 
siderations of  cheap  profitable  work  were 
paramount ;  considerations  of  life  were 
almost  utterly  ignored."^  "In  the  new 
cities,"  says  Arnold  Toynbee,  "  denounced 
as  dens  where  men  came  together  not  for 
the  purposes  of  social  life,  but  to  make  cali- 
coes or  hardware  or  broadcloths — in  the 
new  cities,  the  old  warm  attachments,  born 
of  ancient  local  contiguity  and  personal 
intercourse,  vanished  in  the  fierce  contest 
for  wealth  among  thousands  who  had  never 
seen  each  other's  faces  before.  Between  the 
individual  workman  and  the  capitalist  who 
employed  hundreds  of  '  hands '  a  wide  gulf 
opened ;  the  workman  ceased  to  be  the 
cherished  dependent ;  he  became  the  living 
tool  of  whom  the  employer  knew  less  than 
he  did  of  his  steam  engine."  ^ 

Wealth    was    increasing  at  a  prodigious 
rate ;  these  great  capitalist  employers  were 

'  "The  Evolution  of  Modern  Capitalism,"  p,  325. 
'  "The  Industrial  Revolution,"  p.  190. 


48  The  Past 

heaping  up  large  fortunes ;  but  the  tend- 
ency of  wages  was  downward  ;  the  hours  of 
labor  were  long  and  women  and  children 
were  forced  into  the  most  degrading  servi- 
tude. Before  the  new  industry  was  thirty 
years  old  the  working  classes  of  England 
had  sunk  into  a  miserable  proletariat.  Gov- 
ernment reports  of  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century  show  that  children  of  five 
and  six  years  were  commonly  found  in  the 
factories.  The  day's  Avork  was  from  twelve 
to  fourteen  and  fifteen  hours ;  in  some  dis- 
tricts it  reached  sixteen  hours.  Machines 
that  could  be  tended  by  women  and  chil- 
dren drove  the  husbands  and  fathers  out  of 
employment  and  forced  them  to  stand  idle 
in  the  market-place.  "  Nor  was  this  un- 
measured abuse  of  child  labor,"  says  Mr. 
Hyndman,  ''  confined  to  the  cotton,  silk  or 
wool  industries.  It  spread  in  every  direc- 
tion. The  profit  was  so  great  that  nothing 
could  stop  its  development.  The  report  of 
1842  is  crammed  with  statements  as  to  the 
fearful  overwork  of  girls  and  boys  in  iron 


The  Past  49 

and  coal  mines,  which  doubtless  had  been 
going  on  from  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  Children,  being  small  and  handy, 
were  particularly  convenient  for  small 
veins  of  coal,  and  for  pits  where  no  great 
amount  of  capital  was  embarked  ;  they  could 
get  about  where  horses  and  mules  could  not. 
Little  girls  were  forced  to  carry  heavy  buck- 
ets of  coal  up  high  ladders,  and  little  girls 
and  boys  dragged  the  coal  bunkers  along 
instead  of  animals.  Women  were  com- 
monly employed  underground  at  the  filth- 
iest tasks."  ^ 

I  have  spoken  of  these  women  and  chil- 
dren as  being  forced  to  labor  after  this  man- 
ner ;  I  have  named  these  conditions  servi- 
tude. Was  not  labor  free  in  England,  one 
hundred  years  ago  ?  Were  not  these  people, 
one  and  all,  male  and  female,  enjoying 
all  the  blessings  of  free  contract  ?  Most  as- 
suredly they  were.  These  employers  had 
no  legal  claim  upon  them.  So  far  as  the 
laws  of  England  were  concerned  they  had 

•  *'  Historic  Basis  of  Socialism  in  England, "  p.  166. 


50  The  Past 

the  right  to  work  for  whom  they  pleased, 
and  to  make  their  own  bargains  about 
wages.  It  was  while  these  burdens  were 
crushing  the  life  of  the  English  laborers 
that  Cowper  was  writing  : 

"  Slaves  cannot  breathe  in  England  ;  if  their  Inngs 
Eeceive  our  air  that  moment  they  are  free  ! 
They  touch  our  country  and  their  shackles  fall. " 

The  only  compulsion  to  which  these  people 
were  subject  was  the  compulsion  of  circum- 
stance. The  forces  by  which  they  were 
driven  were  hunger  and  cold.  The  servi- 
tude that  galled  them  was  that  of  pitiless 
economic  laws,  and  there  is  no  oppression 
more  relentless.  For  even  as  Herbert  Spen- 
cer, the  great  champion  of  free  contract,  the 
great  antagonist  of  state  regulation,  has 
said :  "■  The  wage-earning  factory  hand 
can,  indeed,  exemplify  entirely  free  labor,  in 
so  far  that,  making  contracts  at  will  and  able 
to  break  them  after  short  notice,  he  is  free  to 
engage  with  whomsoever  he  pleases  and  when 
he  pleases.  But  this  liberty  amounts  in  prac- 
tice to  little  more  than  the  ability  to  ex- 


The  Past  51 

change  one  slavery  for  another ;  since,  fit 
only  for  this  particular  occupation,  he  has 
rarely  an  opportunity  of  doing  anything 
more  than  decide  in  what  mill  he  will  pass 
the  remainder  of  his  dreary  days.  The 
coercion  of  circumstances  often  bears  more 
hardly  on  him  than  the  coercion  of  a  mas- 
ter does  on  one  in  bondage."  ^  This  was 
the  first  great,  outstanding  fact  developed 
in  the  industrial  revolution.  It  was  not 
indeed  accepted  as  a  fact,  either  by  the 
masters  or  by  the  political  economists  of  the 
day  who  furnished  them  their  business 
theories.  It  was  strenuously  and  angrily 
denied.  It  was  maintained  that  individual 
freedom  of  contract  was  the  one  thing  pre- 
cious and  inalienable ;  that  it  must  in  no 
way  be  impaired,  either  by  law  or  by  combi- 
nations of  laborers.  Business  would  be 
ruined,  these  men  predicted,  and  the  national 
prosperity  destroyed  if  any  attempts  were 
made  to  restrict  by  law  the  freedom  of  trade. 
But   all  this   economic   dogmatism  finally 

•  "  Principles  of  Sociology,"  III,  525. 


52  The  Past 

shrank  to  silence  before  the  appalling  fact 
that  the  laboring  classes  of  England  were 
steadily  sinking.  In  the  great  industrial 
centres  the  effects  of  this  regime  of  so-called 
free  labor  were  visible  in  the  wasted  forms 
and  pallid  cheeks  of  the  operatives  ;  physi- 
cal degeneracy  was  manifest ;  children  were 
dying  like  flies  ;  the  vigor  of  the  nation  was 
being  undermined.  Parliamentary  inves- 
tigations revealed  a  state  of  things  that 
made  the  nation  shudder.  It  was  demon- 
strated, in  a  manner  that  ought  to  be  con- 
vincing to  all  following  generations,  that 
free  labor  and  contract  are  not  in  them- 
selves the  entire  solution  of  the  labor 
question  ;  that  under  their  unhindered  op- 
eration, with  pure  selfishness  as  the  motive 
force,  and  competition  as  the  regulative 
principle,  a  condition  of  bondage  and  mis- 
ery is  sure  to  follow  far  worse  than  the  serf- 
dom of  the  Middle  Ages. 

Toward  these  forlorn  conditions  the 
laboring  classes  in  all  countries  have  gravi- 
tated, whenever  the  organization  of  labor 


The  Past  53 

has  been  put  upon  this  basis.  But  in  Eng- 
land especially,  and  to  some  extent  in  other 
countries  also,  means  have  been  found  of 
resisting  this  downward  pressure,  and  of 
rescuing  the  working  people  from  their 
degradation. 

The  first,  and  by  far  the  most  important  of 
these  measures  is  the  combination  of  the 
working  people  themselves  for  their  own 
protection.  I  cannot  dwell  upon  the  his- 
tory of  the  trades-unions,  for  that  is  the 
theme  of  one  of  the  following  lectures,  but 
nothing  is  more  vital,  under  a  wage  system, 
in  the  large  industry,  than  this  right  of  the 
laboring  men  to  organize  and  to  secure, 
through  their  organization,  better  conditions 
of  labor  and  better  wages.  This  is  a  right 
which  has  been  disputed  from  the  begin- 
ning. By  laws  which  absolutely  forbade 
working  men  to  combine  for  any  purpose 
whatsoever,  and  which  made  it  a  criminal 
conspiracy  for  two  or  three  of  them  to  con- 
sult together  for  the  purpose  of  securing 
shorter  hours  or  better  wages,  the  employ- 


54  Th^  P^st 

ing  classes  of  England  did  their  utmost  to 
outlaw  the  trades-unions.  Much  of  the 
violence  with  which  they  have  been  justly 
charged  has  been  due  to  this  tyrannical 
purpose  to  deprive  them  of  the  only  means 
by  which  they  could  protect  themselves 
from  enslavement. 

Nothing  can  be  plainer  than  that  there 
can  be  no  liberty  for  working  men  in  these 
days  of  great  corporate  combinations, 
unless  they  are  permitted  to  unite  in  the 
enforcement  of  their  demands  for  better 
conditions.  It  is  ridiculous  to  talk  of  free- 
dom of  contract  between  employer  and  em- 
ployee, when  the  employer  is  a  great  cor- 
poration, and  the  employee  is  a  single  in- 
dividual. The  freedom  of  the  man  outside 
the  gates  is  simply  the  freedom  of  taking 
what  is  offered  him  or  starving.  The  only 
kind  of  bargaining  by  which  the  laborer  can 
preserve  for  himself  a  vestige  of  freedom  is 
collective  bargaining.  If  all  the  employees 
stand  together  to  assert  their  claims,  they 
have   some   chance   of  getting   them    con- 


The  Past  55 

sidered.  They  have  a  right  to  stand  to- 
gether, and  a  right  to  be  represented  by  the 
men  of  their  own  choice  in  making  their 
bargains.  They  may  make  mistakes  in 
choosing  their  representatives,  and  mistakes 
in  urging  their  demands.  Very  well ;  they 
have  a  right  to  make  mistakes  ;  that  is  one  of 
the  inalienable  rights  of  a  freeman.  What 
would  our  condition  be  as  citizens  if  our 
political  liberties  were  taken  away  from  us 
whenever  we  made  mistakes?  We  have 
learned  most  of  what  we  know  by  making 
mistakes,  and  having  to  suffer  for  them. 
What  the  unions  have  no  right  to  do  is 
to  use  violence,  in  any  way,  in  enforcing 
their  demands.  That  is  not  only  a  crime, 
it  is  a  miserable  and  costly  blunder.  But 
to  unite,  and  to  bargain  collectively  with 
their  employers  through  their  own  repre- 
sentatives, with  respect  to  wages  and  con- 
ditions of  work  and  hours  of  labor  is  their 
right,  which  law  must  confirm  and  which 
their  employers  must  recognize.  If  the 
wage-system  is  to  be    maintained,  and   the 


56  The  Past 

large  system  of  industry  is  to  continue, 
this  must  be  accepted  as  a  fundamental 
fact.  The  denial  of  it  is  not  only  unjust,  it 
is  stupid. 

It  was  a  long  time,  as  I  have  intimated, 
before  this  right  was  even  legally  conceded 
to  working  men  ;  but  after  much  turbulence 
and  strife  their  cause  prevailed ;  the  old 
laws  against  combination  were  swept  from 
the  English  statute  books  ;  and  in  all  the 
English-speaking  countries  the  unions  are 
now  placed  under  legal  protection.  The 
weapon  thus  put  into  the  hands  of  the 
working  man  has  often  been  used  recklessly 
and  sometimes  brutally  and  tyrannically  ; 
but  by  means  of  it  he  has  won  and  main- 
tained his  freedom  ;  in  the  use  of  it  he  has 
gained  intelligence,  self-mastery,  wisdom  ; 
and  if  we  are  often  impatient  with  his  abuse 
of  it,  we  must  remember  that  without  it  he 
would  surely  have  sunk  into  a  serfage 
worse  than  that  of  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  second  of  the  agencies  which  have 
been  at  work  for  the  rescue  and  elevation 


The  Past  57 

of  the  working  man  is  that  of  restrictive 
and  directive  legislation.  Not  even  the 
Parliaments  and  the  Legislatures  could 
have  helped  the  working  men  if  they  had 
not  helped  themselves  ;  but  there  was  much 
that  could  be  done,  especially  in  protecting 
women  and  children  from  the  brutalizing 
effects  of  unhindered  competition,  and  in 
safe-guarding  the  rights  of  the  laboring 
classes.  The  fact  has  come  to  be  recog- 
nized that  freedom  is  a  plant  that  does  not 
grow  wild,  any  more  than  corn  or  wheat 
grows  wild ;  that  it  needs  wise  husbandry, 
enclosures  well  kept,  and  careful  tillage ; 
that  it  is  the  business  of  the  state  to  provide 
conditions  under  which  freedom  can  come  to 
fruitage,  and  to  exterminate  the  weeds  and 
parasites  that  choke  its  growth.  This  is 
what  the  Labor  Legislation  of  most  civilized 
lands  has  undertaken  to  do,  and  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that  it  has  been,  on  the  whole, 
an  effectual  agency  in  promoting  the  well- 
being  of  the  working  classes.  Age  limits 
are  generally  fixed,  below  which  children 


58  The  Past 

may  not  be  employed  in  workshops  and 
factories ;  the  hours  of  labor  for  children 
and  sometimes  for  women  have  been 
limited  ;  sanitary  conditions,  and  the  safe- 
guarding of  dangerous  machinery  have  been 
required  ;  the  regulation  of  sweat  shops  has 
checked  abuses  that  lurked  in  holes  and 
corners,  and  the  factory  and  mine  inspec- 
tion for  which  most  civilized  States  have 
provided,  has  secured  the  enforcement  of 
salutary  laws.  In  England,  the  Factory 
Legislation  was  largely  the  work  of  mem- 
bers of  the  aristocracy,  first  among  whom 
must  always  be  named  the  Seventh  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury.  These  true  noblemen  made 
common  cause  with  the  working  people, 
and  against  the  opposition  of  factory  lords 
and  political  economists,  carried  through 
Parliament  the  protective  measures  which 
have  done  so  much  for  the  emancipation  of 
the  working  classes.  The  Factory  Legisla- 
tion of  all  the  civilized  lands  is  one  of  the 
trophies  of  civilization  ;  it  bears  witness  to 
the  fact  that  the  working  man  has  not  only 


The  Past  59 

been  set  free,  but  that  his  welfare  and  eleva- 
tion have  become  the  care  of  the  whole 
commonwealth ;  that  in  some  imperfect 
way  society  has  begun  to  understand  the 
meaning  of  Paul's  apologue  about  the  body 
and  its  members. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  last  of  the 
forces  which  have  been  at  work  for  the  up- 
lifting and  emancipation  of  the  laboring 
classes — the  enthusiasm  of  humanity,  a 
slowly-gathering  fire  in  human  hearts,  be- 
fore which,  in  the  process  of  the  suns,  all 
injustice  and  oppression  must  surely  melt 
away.  All  these  ameliorations  on  which 
we  have  been  looking — the  disappearance 
of  slavery  and  of  serfdom,  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  laborer,  the  removal  of  the 
hindrances  to  his  progress,  the  broadening 
of  his  path  to  freedom,  have  been  due,  in 
the  last  analysis,  to  what  Mr.  Kidd  calls 
"  the  immense  fund  of  altruistic  feeling 
with  which  our  Western  societies  have  be- 
come equipped."  *'  It  is,"  he  goes  on,  "  the 
disintegrating    influence    of  this   fund    of 


6o  The  Past 

altruism  in  our  civilization  that  has  under- 
mined the  position  of  the  power-holding 
classes.  It  is  the  resultant,  deepening  and 
softening  of  character  among  us  which 
alone  has  made  possible  that  developmental 
movement  whereby  all  the  people  are  being 
slowly  brought  into  the  rivalry  of  life  on 
equal  conditions.  And,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
evolutionist,  it  is  by  contributing  the  factor 
which  has  rendered  this  unique  process  of 
social  development  possible,  that  the  Chris- 
tian religion  has  tended  to  raise  the  peoples 
affected  by  it  to  the  commanding  place  they 
have  come  to  occupy  in  the  world."  ^ 

This  silent  and  subtle  force  of  humane 
sentiment,  strong  as  the  sunshine,  resistless 
as  the  south  wind  in  April,  has  already 
changed  the  social  climate,  but  it  has  more 
Avork  to  do  before  "  all  men's  good  "  shall  be 
"  each  man's  rule," 

"  Aud  light  shall  spread,  and  man  be  liker  man 
Through  all  the  circle  of  the  golden  year." 

There  is  many  a  stronghold  of  greed  and 

1  "Social  Evolution,"  p.  165. 


The  Past  61 

heartlessness  yet  to  be  stormed  in  the  hearts 
of  men  who  care  more  for  gain  than  for  hu- 
manity, and  who  are  only  too  willing  to 
spoil  the  weak  for  their  own  enrichment. 
We  have  no  Roman  patricians  in  these  days 
who  sit  at  their  feasts  and  see  the  blood  of 
slaves  staining  for  their  delectation  the 
floors  of  their  banqueting  halls ;  but  we 
have  giants  of  finance,  not  a  few,  who  have 
learned  by  masterful  combinations  to  levy 
tribute  on  the  life  and  labor  of  millions  of 
toilers  for  the  erection  of  fabulous  fortunes. 
To  make  the  world  ashamed  of  these  colos- 
sal egoists,  and  to  make  them  ashamed  of 
themselves  is  one  task  now  before  us.  It  is 
not  a  hopeless  task  ;  as  sure  as  icebergs  melt 
in  southern  seas  that  greed  will  yet  be  sub- 
dued to  the  service  of  mankind. 

And  there  are  other  tasks  not  less  urgent, 
not  less  hopeful.  The  men  of  toil  them- 
selves need  to  be  brought  under  the  influ- 
ence of  this  same  benign  power.  The  reck- 
less savagery  with  which  the  hosts  of  labor 
sometimes  conduct  their  combats,  in  their 


62  The  Past 

narrow  partisanship  making  war  on  the  de- 
fenseless, in  their  mad  pursuit  of  the  in- 
terests of  their  class  trampling  on  the  rights 
of  all  other  classes,  reveals  to  us  a  crying 
need  of  the  softening  of  human  hearts  and 
the  broadening  of  human  sympathies.  But 
that  great "  fund  of  altruistic  feeling,"  which 
the  generations  have  been  accumulating 
will  be  strong  enough  to  subdue  these  enmi- 
ties and  barbarisms,  and  to  teach  men  how 
to  stand  for  their  rights  unswervingly,  with 
malice  for  none  and  with  charity  for  all. 

The  labor  question  of  to-day,  when  we 
get  at  the  heart  of  it,  is  simply  this  :  What 
can  be  done  to  bring  employer  and  em- 
ployed together  upon  a  basis  of  genuine 
good  will ;  to  make  them  friends,  comrades, 
helpers  of  one  another  ? 

What  can  be  done  to  fill  the  heart  of  the 
master  with  the  passion  of  service  and  make 
him  see  that  his  first  and  highest  business 
is  the  promotion  of  the  welfare  of  the  men 
in  his  factory  or  his  mine ;  that  this  is  a 
calling  which  angels  might  covet — the  no- 


The  Past  63 

blest  and  divinest  kind  of  work  that  men 
can  think  of  doing  ?  This  is  the  first  and 
great  question. 

The  second  like  unto  it  is  this  :  What  can 
be  done  to  inspire  the  men  who  do  the  work 
with  the  same  passion  for  service ;  to  show 
them  that  the  labor  which  enlarges  the  sum 
of  human  good  is  its  own  exceeding  great 
reward  ;  to  make  them  see  that  it  is  not  by 
contending  but  by  cooperating  that  the 
largest  gains  are  made  and  each  man's  share 
is  multiplied  ? 

This  is  the  labor  question  for  the  twen- 
tieth century,  and  it  is  the  question  which 
the  twentieth  century  must  answer.  I  am 
not  sure  that  the  answer  can  be  put  into  the 
terms  of  the  wage-system  :  I  rather  doubt 
it.  I  think  that  some  kind  of  cooperation 
will  have  to  be  found  by  which  the  interests 
of  the  men  who  direct  the  work  and  the 
men  who  do  the  work  will  be  more 
perfectly  and  more  consciously  identified. 
But  the  answer  must  be  found,  and  it  must 
be  an  answer  of  peace.     We  are  not  going 


^4  The  Past 

to  solve  the  labor  question  by  gathering 
men  into  mighty  armies  and  setting  them 
to  fighting  one  another  ;  that  is  simpl}^  mad- 
ness. All  war  is  madness  ;  it  is  the  climax 
of  unreason.  Brutes  and  savages  know  no 
better  than  to  fight ;  for  men,  for  the  men 
of  the  twentieth  century  after  Christ,  it  is 
not  only  wicked,  it  is  absurd.  The  time  is 
near  when  these  industrial  wars  will  appear 
to  be  as  senseless,  as  monstrous,  as  the  wager 
of  battle  and  the  ordeal  by  which  disputes 
were  settled  in  the  Dark  Ages. 

The  answer  must  be  peace.  Among  men 
of  good  will  there  can  be  no  other  answer. 
And  there  is  no  permanent  place  upon  this 
planet  for  any  other  kind  of  men.  Men  of 
ill  will  are  not  wanted  here.  They  do  not 
fit  into  the  nature  of  things ;  they  do  not 
make  sense  ;  they  make  confusion,  discord, 
chaos ;  they  must  go.  O  bells  of  the  new 
year,  of  the  new  century,  ring  them  out ! 
ring  them  out !  Ring  out  the  churl,  the  ego- 
ist, the  sect-man,  the  party-man,  the  class- 
man !     Ring   them   out   from  church  and 


The  Past  65 

school  and  council  chamber  and  capitol, 
from  office  and  counting-room  and  shop  and 
factory  ! 

Eing  in  the  valiant  man  and  free, 
The  larger  heart,  the  kindlier  hand  ; 
Eing  out  the  darkness  of  the  land, 
Eing  in  the  Christ  that  is  to  be. 


II 

THE  CORPORATION 
By  Talcott  Williams,  LL.  D. 


II 

THE   CORPORATION 

The  mere  term  "  corporation  "  has  many 
meanings  and  much  history.  It  can  be  ap- 
proached from  many  sides  and  discussed 
from  many  aspects,  historical,  legal,  and 
social,  as  it  is  considered  a  part  of  the  past 
of  the  race,  the  creature  and  product  of  law, 
or  an  integral  share  of  the  development, 
machinery,  and  working  of  society.  In 
presenting  each  of  them  it  would  be  pos- 
sible to  detach  ourselves  from  its  human 
relations,  and  by  concentrating  attention  on 
the  impersonal  character  of  the  corporation, 
on  special  phases  of  its  vicious  legal  man- 
agement, or  on  the  extent  to  which,  actually 
or  apparently,  it  moves  towards  monopoly, 
to  justify  any  preconceived  view. 

I  prefer,  instead,  frankly  to  accept  the 
term   **  corporation  "   as  it  appears  to  have 


70  The  Corporation 

been  intended  to  be  used  in  this  course,  as 
defining  the  current  corporate  organization 
towards  which  the  management  and  direc- 
tion, the  ownership  and  control,  of  capital 
steadily  seem  to  tend,  supplanting,  and  in 
some  broad  fields,  altogether  excluding,  in- 
dividual action,  activity,  and  ownership. 
Public  corporations,  properly  so-called,  from 
the  state  down  to  the  smallest  town  or  the 
least  important  board,  corporations  ecclesi- 
astical, charitable,  or  in  education — all  tlie 
wide  category  of  incorporation  which  in 
various  forms,  created  by  statute  law  or 
recognized  by  common  law,  deals  with  the 
non-profit-making  offices  of  the  corporation, 
we  sweep  aside.  They  are  beside  our  pur- 
pose. Our  attention  is  concentrated  instead 
on  that  specialized  group  of  corporations 
which  principally  engages  our  attention  in 
any  companies'  act,  engaged  in  the  work  of 
production,  mining,  manufacture,  banking, 
insurance,  transportation,  and  distribution. 
When  Blackstone  wrote,  these  corporations 
played  so  small  a  part  that  he  gives  them 


The  Corporation  71 

less  space  than  he  lavished  on  the  manifold 
subtleties  of  the  corporation  sole.  To-day, 
when  men  speak  of  the  corporation  law  or 
write  on  corporation  law,  they  think  of 
nothing  else.  These  are  the  "  corporations  " 
in  the  modern  sense  of  the  term.  The  issue 
they  present  is  whether  the  substitution  for 
the  individual  of  the  presence  and  existence 
in  dominant  control  of  the  corporation  in 
substantially  all  the  activities  of  modern 
society  in  production,  transport  and  ex- 
change, outside  of  agriculture  (the  farm  is 
still  as  individual  in  control,  work  and 
ownership  as  was  once  the  mine,  shop,  forge, 
cart,  stage  and  bank)  is  for  better  or  for 
worse. 

The  extraordinary  phenomenon  that  a 
form  and  mode  of  human  association,  exist- 
ing for  centuries  and  developed  under  all 
law,  once  used  almost  exclusively  for  rela- 
tions whose  phenomenon  demanded  the 
continuous  life  of  some  legal  creation  that 
would  carry  on  church,  college,  board,  or 
guild,  has  suddenly  become  the  chosen  ma- 


72  The  Corporation 

chinery  for  the  swiftest,  the  most  tem- 
porary, and  the  most  immediate  needs  of 
society,  has  aroused  controversy  and  created 
alarm,  quickened  by  no  other  change  in  the 
modern  organization  of  society.  The  cor- 
poration in  its  new  form  overshadows  so- 
ciety. Men  fear  it.  They  attack  it.  It 
plaj'^s  the  part  which  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  even  in  the  first  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  was  taken  by  "  tyr- 
ann}^ "  and  "superstition."  Who  hears  of 
these  bugbears  of  the  past  to-day?  But 
when  a  newspaper  draughtsman  with  a  gift 
for  caricature  and  the  artist's  sympathy  for 
the  fears  and  feelings  of  his  fellow  men,  de- 
sires to  touch  a  common  chord,  he  portrays 
"  the  corporation"  or  ''  the  trusts  "  in  the  vast 
ogre  before  which  the  honest  citizen  shrinks 
and  cowers  as  the  dinosaur  might  have 
chased  primitive  man  as  his  luckless 
quarry,  if  the  two  had  trod  the  earth  to- 
gether. 

I  count  myself  fortunate  in  being  able  to 
take   up   this  overmastering   issue  in  this 


The  Corporation  73 

course  on  the  platform  of  a  Christian  Sociol- 
ogy, the  only  platform  on  which  it  can  be 
solved.  Such  a  sociology  recognizes  no  law 
but  love,  and  love  as  a  law.  It  devoutly 
believes  that  the  universe  is  friendly,  and 
moves  steadily  forward  in  all  its  develop- 
ment from  star  to  society  to  make  the  work- 
ing of  universal  love  more  visible  and  the 
freedom  of  spiritual  beings  to  love  one  an- 
other, more  complete.  Rejecting  selfishness 
as  the  mainspring  of  social  relations,  it  as- 
serts selfhood  and  its  development  as  a 
guide. 

If  there  are  some  things  which  challenge 
this  view,  there  are  more  that  support  it. 
There  is  enough,  at  all  events,  in  its  favor 
to  make  it  a  sound  working  hypothesis,  to 
which  one  can  adjust  partial!}^  knoAvn  facts, 
since  most  tend  in  this  direction.  Three 
relations  every  man  has ;  one  to  the  State 
that  rules,  one  to  the  faith  that  inspires,  and 
one  to  the  economy  that  supports.  In  two, 
a  democracy  based  on  free  selfhood  is  al- 
ready supreme.     The  last  one  great,  power- 


74  ^^^  Corporation 

ful  despotism  which  survives,  Russia,  is 
moving  to  an  unequal  conflict  with  a  State 
which  within  a  generation  has  embraced 
free  constitutions,  and  owes  all  its  strength 
to  its  conversion  from  autocracy.  The  his- 
tory of  the  modern  State  is  a  development 
from  an  hereditary  and  more  or  less  heredi- 
tary executive,  owning  his  power  so  nearly 
as  property,  to  take  a  familiar  instance,  that 
the  law  of  real  estate  is  the  one  b}^  which 
the  descent  of  the  English  throne  is  regu- 
lated and  gradually  differentiated,  into  a 
vast  number  of  nearly  equal  holders  of 
political  power  whose  consent  regulates  the 
rule  of  the  State.  All  civilized  States  have 
not  reached  this  democratic  organization  ; 
but  in  this  direction  all  States  tend. 

The  Church  in  the  broadest  sense,  the 
visible  body  of  man  working  and  walking 
by  faith,  as  the  State  is  man  in  rule,  moves 
along  the  same  path.  The  priest,  too,  was 
once  absolute  in  his  powers  and  hereditary 
in  his  functions.  He,  too,  once  owned  his 
office,  and    his  priestly    functions   are  still 


The  Corporation  75 

treated  by  English  law  as  closely  akin  to  a 
realty  fee.  Here,  too,  we  are  all  aware  that 
under  the  influence  of  the  democratic  spirit 
and  a  democratic  development,  an  heredi- 
tary priesthood  disappears,  and  is  succeeded 
by  priests  chosen  by  their  people.  The  Pope 
himself  is  an  elective  monarch,  in  theory 
chosen  by  the  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons 
of  the  churches  that  once  made  his  ancient 
diocese.  As  with  the  State,  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  Church  in  all  its  forms  tends 
more  or  less  completely  towards  a  demo- 
cratic ideal  in  which  the  different  powers 
of  the  mass  of  the  faithful  come  in  various 
forms  to  select,  direct,  and  leave  in  control 
the  spiritual  heads  of  the  faith. 

What  is  true  of  the  State  which  rules  and 
the  faith  which  inspires,  must  in  due  season 
be  true  of  the  economy  which  supports. 
Nor  can  we  wander  wide  from  the  future 
path  of  modern  progress  if  we  raise  in  either 
hand  these  twin  lamps  of  history  to  light 
our  way,  and  test  present  and  future  change 
by   the    question    whether    the    economic 


76  The  Corporation 

changes  brought  by  the  corporation  tend 
towards  a  democratic  organization  of  the 
economic  structure  of  society  in  which  self- 
hood becomes  more  or  less  vital,  visible,  and 
charged  with  recurrent  volition.  For  the 
essence  of  civil  freedom  is  that  will  returns 
to  the  individual  periodically.  By  this 
standard  we  judge  the  organization  of  the 
State  and  the  Church,  and  by  this  we  have 
a  right  to  say  the  economic  organization  of 
society  must  stand  or  fall.  If  it  become 
increasingly  democratic  as  has  the  State  and 
the  Church,  it  moves  in  the  right  direction, 
and  if  not,  not.  By  this  democratic  sign, 
flourishing  and  flowering  best  under  the 
most  democratic  of  faiths,  Christianity, 
man's  selfhood  conquers. 

The  corporation,  like  all  other  social  phe- 
nomena, must  submit  to  this  test.  The 
object  of  the  democratic  organization  of 
society  is  to  give  the  individual  initiative, 
opportunity,  and  security.  Unless  the  cor- 
poration do  this,  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fight  against  it.     It  is  in  its  origin  the  joint 


The  Corporation  77 

product  of  Roman  and  English  law.  With 
the  general  attributes  of  the  body  corporate, 
its  permanence,  its  artificial  character  as  a 
legal  person,  able  to  hold  property,  self- 
governing,  limited  in  its  powers,  activities, 
life,  and  existence,  by  the  State  which 
creates  it,  every  intelligent  person  may  be 
assumed  to  be  familiar.  The  structure  of 
the  ordinary  gainful  corporation  with  its 
shareholders,  directors,  and  charters,  is  per- 
haps more  frequent  in  American  life  than 
in  any  other.  No  one  of  us,  not  a  tramp, 
but  has  at  some  point,  corporate  relations, 
and  it  is  probable  that  a  majority  of  Ameri- 
cans to-day,  directly  or  indirectly,  own  cor- 
porate property. 

The  American  development  of  the  Cor- 
poration is  thus  diffused  because  in  part 
the  American  theory  and  practice  of  the 
corporation  has  blended  the  twin  origins 
from  which  it  springs.  The  Roman  col- 
legium was  a  voluntary  association,  already 
organized  or  existing,  to  which  the  imperial 
rescript  gave  the  permanence,  powers,  and 


78  The  Corporation 

standing  of  a  corporation.  Even  this  came 
late.  Earlier  the  mere  existence  of  the  as- 
sociate body,  the  priests  of  a  temple,  the 
brothers  of  an  ancient  rite,  trade,  guild,  or 
beneficial  association,  by  virtue  of  its  organ- 
ization formed  a  collegium,  for  which  later, 
as  the  imperial  power  extended  its  im- 
mediate supervision,  a  rescript  was  necessary 
to  give  corporate  powers  to  a  body  already 
acting  as  a  unit.  In  English  law,  borrowed 
in  this  respect  from  the  Roman,  in  its  com- 
pleted form,  the  charter  creates  the  corpo- 
ration. It  exists  solely  because  the  State 
gives  it  life,  permanence,  and  power.  It 
has  no  other  origin  and  no  other  authority, 
and  its  powers  all  begin,  live,  move,  and 
have  their  being,  within  the  area  of  action 
provided  and  limited  by  this  authority  and 
act  of  the  State. 

American  law,  more  in  practice  than  in 
theory,  which  last  indeed  follows  in  Eng- 
lish steps,  has  combined  these  two  views, 
and  has  been  followed  therein  by  more 
recent    English    statutes.     The   State   still 


The  Corporation  79 

stands  as  the  source  and  fountain  of  origin 
and  authority  for  the  corporation,  but  under 
"  general  "  corporation  acts,  any  group  of 
citizens  can  obtain  this  power.  By  a  blend 
of  the  two  methods  in  which  the  State  in 
Roman  law  recognized  associations  already 
existing,  and  in  English  law  created  them 
anew,  the  State  leaves  open  to  every  associa- 
tion and  enterprise,  which  chooses  by  its  own 
initiative  to  use  them,  the  sovereign  powers 
of  creating  a  corporation. 

Corporate  powers  and  their  franchise 
have  in  their  evolution  and  development 
passed  through  the  same  stages  as  the  va- 
rious franchises  of  that  greater  corporation, 
the  State.  Citizenship  and  the  exercise  of 
the  various  "  freedom  "  of  the  citizen  was 
once  only  secured  by  the  act  and  grant  of 
the  State.  Within  narrow  limits — as  in  a 
citizenship  making  one  eligible  to  the  House 
of  Commons — these  limits  still  survive  in 
England.  With  us,  the  act  and  initia- 
tive of  the  individual,  subject  to  judicial 
record    and  regulation,  open  all  the  "  free- 


8o  The  Corporation 

dom  "  of  citizenship,  save  one — the  presi- 
dency, the  last  relic  of  the  general  rights 
once  jealously  reserved,  save  as  opened  by 
special  statute,  to  the  "  native  born."  In 
both  countries,  what  was  once  a  privilege, 
has  become  a  general  right. 

Parallel  too  with  the  changes  by  which 
many  of  the  rights  of  citizenship,  the 
practice  even  of  certain  crafts,  once  wedded 
and  limited  to  residence  in  a  particular 
place,  a  residence  not  to  be  acquired  by  mere 
domicile,  have  now  become  general,  acquired 
at  will,  as  men  come  and  go,  corporate  owner- 
ship and  responsibility  has  been  rendered 
capable  of  passing  from  hand  to  hand.  Any 
man  can  acquire  any  franchise  of  citizenship 
and  count  but  for  one.  Shares  are  the 
franchise  of  a  corporation.  Once  they  only 
passed  under  various  restrictions.  They  pass 
now  with  a  constantly  increasing  freedom, 
and  constantly  approximate  in  their  powers 
to  the  rule  of  a  majority.  French  law  retains 
the  continuous  responsibility  of  the  holder 
of  corporate  shares,  whose  losses  can  in  cer- 


The  Corporation  81 

tain  cases  be  followed  back  through  past 
holders  of  record,  a  responsibility  evaded  by 
selling  a  registered  right  of  ownership,  in- 
stead of  the  share  itself. 

Corporate  shares  carry  with  them  under 
these  conditions  a  liability  akin  to  that  of 
our  national  bank  shares,  but  reaching  all 
past  holders  and  not  the  present  holders 
only.  Corporate  credit  and  corporate  sta- 
bility is  promoted  ;  but  at  the  cost  of  the 
free  use  of  corporate  powers  under  a  re- 
sponsibility limited  in  amount  to  the  pres- 
ent holder  and  defeasible.  Here  again,  as 
in  the  State,  the  tendency  in  the  corporation 
is  to  relieve  the  individual  of  risks  for  exer- 
cising a  franchise,  (that  is  owning  shares), 
once  hedged  about  with  responsibilities,  as 
the  franchise  of  citizenship  was  itself  once, 
in  fact,  and  not,  as  now,  only  in  name, 
burdened  with  certain  responsibilities  in 
war  and  in  public  levies. 

For  good  or  for  evil,  therefore,  exactly  as 
citizenship  has  Vjeen  diffused  and  freed  from 
immediate  personal  limitations  so  through 


82  The  Corporation 

manifold  changes  in  American  corporate 
law,  some  the  work  of  legislation  and  some 
the  work  of  the  courts,  the  creation  and  use 
of  the  corporation  has  become  a  privilege 
free  to  all  for  every  purpose,  and  the  owner- 
ship of  shares  in  a  corporation,  or  the  direct- 
tion  of  its  affairs,  has  been  lightened  of 
almost  every  past  burden  which  rendered 
the  transfer  of  this  property  difficult  or  a 
part  in  its  management  perilous.  Whether 
this  be  wise  or  not,  I  am  not  now  discuss- 
ing. The  last  English  Companies  Act  re- 
cords a  distinct  reaction  towards  increased 
fiduciary  responsibility  in  promoters  and 
managers,  and  increased  powers  of  control 
in  shareholders.  Our  own  legislation  will 
doubtless  take  a  like  course.  But  for  the 
present,  I  am  only  pointing  out  that  under 
a  development  as  complete  as  it  has  been  un- 
conscious, we  have  carried  to  their  farthest 
limit  the  emancipation  of  these  artificial 
persons.  They  do  business  under  any 
sovereignty  and  are,  in  New  Jersey  at  least, 
expressly  endowed  with  powers  which  they 


The  Corporation  83 

can  exercise  only  outside  the  sovereignty 
which  creates  them.  Their  shareholders 
have  a  responsibility  so  limited  that  in 
practice  it  is  of  the  rarest  for  creditors  to 
seek  to  levy  upon  it  and  as  difficult  for  the 
shareholder  to  exercise  it  in  his  own  pro- 
tection. Lastly,  the  directors  and  mana- 
gers, while  in  theory  bound  by  a  strict  and 
enforceable  fiduciary  responsibility — as  are 
so  many  public  offices — have,  like  them, 
come  in  practice  to  be  free  from  the  attempt 
to  enforce  these  responsibilities.  At  all 
points,  as  will  not  escape  the  attentive,  the 
corporation,  once  limited,  rigorous,  and 
crowded  at  all  points  with  burdensome  re- 
sponsibilities for  corporation,  manager,  and 
shareholders,  has  gone  through  changes 
akin  to  those  with  which  we  are  familiar  in 
the  democratic  State  which,  while  it  has 
laws  and  penalties  to  enforce  its  working 
and  the  responsibility  of  its  citizens  and 
public  officers,  yet,  as  we  all  well  know,  really 
depends  for  its  working  on  the  power  of 
public    opinion,  rather    than    on    statutory 


84  The  Corporation 

penalties.  One  might  almost  say  that  trials 
for  treason  and  the  once  familiar  proceed- 
ings of  quo  warranto  against  the  life  of  a 
corporation,  once  frec|uent,  have  both  disap- 
peared together  in  practice,  though  both  re- 
main in  full  force,  in  the  analogous  changes 
which  have  affected  the  State  and  the  cor- 
poration. 

Corporations  were  infrequent,  and  their 
creation  was  treated  as  a  matter  of  solemn 
moment  a  century  ago  in  any  English- 
speaking  legislature.  Even  charitable  cor- 
porations were  challenged  before  they  were 
given  life,  and  so  innocent  a  step  as  a 
charter  to  the  first  missionary  society,  The 
American  Board  of  Commissioners  for  For- 
eign Missions,  led  to  days  of  debate  in  the 
Massachusetts  Legislature.  Corporations 
are  to-day  free  of  these  trammels.  Yet  few 
realize  or  comprehend  the  extent  to  which 
the  entire  propert}^  of  the  countr}^  is  passing 
under  a  direct  corporate  title  or  corporate 
titles  to  mortgages  on  property.  It  may  be 
doubted  if,  a  century  ago  in   this  country. 


The  Corporation  85 

more  than  one  per  cent,  of  its  wealth  was 
held  by  a  corporate  title.  Some  sixty  to 
seventy  years  ago,  when  the  transactions  of 
the  New  York  Stock  Exchange  began  to 
have  a  newspaper  record  and  a  rude  list  be- 
gan to  be  made  of  its  securities,  the  aggre- 
gate of  all  securities  which  could  be  dealt 
in  upon  its  floor  cannot  have  been  much 
over  $500,000,000.  A  very  simple  calcula- 
tion will  cover  them  all,  at  a  time  when 
public  debts  were  small,  banks  and  insur- 
ance companies  few,  and  railroads  had  not  be- 
gun to  be,  while  the  manufacturing  and  trad- 
ing corporation  was  substantiall}^  unknown. 
In  1850,  the  wealth  of  the  country  was 
$5,000,000,000.  It  was  not  over  $3,000,- 
000,000  between  1830  and  1840,  and  may  at 
the  utmost  have  reached  $4,000,000,000. 
Public  and  corporate  securities  in  all  their 
forms  were  then  in  all  probability  from  an 
eighth  to  a  fifth  of  the  wealth  of  the  country. 
They  may  have  been  less.  They  could  not 
have  been  more.  This  was  true  within  the 
lives  of  men  to-day  figuring  on  the  boards  of 


86  The  Corporation 

corporations  whose  aggregate  capital  is  more 
than  the  gross  valuation  of  the  United 
States,  when  they  were  born. 

The  wealth  of  the  United  States  in  1900 
is  placed  at  $93,000,000,000  and  may  four 
years  later  have  reached  a  round  $100,000,- 
000,000.  Figures  like  these,  let  us  not  for- 
get, are  approximations,  mere  measures  of 
relative  value.  They  are  not  to  be  accepted 
as  exact  statistical  statements,  but  they  af- 
ford some  means  of  comparison.  Railroad 
capital,  shares  and  bonds,  and  the  capital 
of  the  new  manufacturing  and  trading  cor- 
porations, known  as  Trusts,  and  various 
forms  of  public  indebtedness,  aggregate  some 
$25,000,000,000.'  By  no  means  are  all  these 
*'  listed  "  on  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange. 
Some  could  not  be.     But  the  possible  ag- 


*  The  aggregate  capitalization  of  the  railways  of  the  United 
States  on  June  30,  1902,  was  $12,134,182,964,  $6,024,201,295  in 
stocks  and  $6,109,981,669  in  bonds.  About  one-sixth  of  this, 
$2,208,518,793,  is  owned  by  railroad  corporations.  "  Trusts  " 
are  subject  to  no  exact  statistical  showing.  Their  aggregate 
capital  is  variously  estimated  from  $4,000,000,000  to  $6,000,- 
000,000.  The  public  debt  of  the  United  States  in  all  forms  is 
about  $2,000,000,000. 


The  Corporation  87 

gregate  is  not  less  than  the  sum  named. 
Nor  is  this  extraordinary.  The  aggregate 
listing  of  the  London  Stock  Exchange  is 
about  $30,000,000,000,  and  includes  a  wider 
range  than  our  own  of  foreign  securities. 
From  a  fifth  to  a  fourth  of  the  aggregate 
wealth  of  the  country  is  therefore  repre- 
sented by  shares  and  obligations  of  larger 
corporations  which  are  either  on  the  Stock 
Exchange  or  can  be  placed  there  whenever 
desired.^  If  we  add  to  this  the  banks  with 
a  capital  of  $1,000,000,000,  savings  banks 
whose  depositors  own  (1902)  $2,750,177,290 
and  whose  liabilities  are  $2,893,172,980,  life 
insurance  companies  (1903)  with  assets  of 
$2,091,872,831,  and  fire  insurance  companies 
with  stock  and  assets  of  $481,548,288,  we 
have  in  this  round  aggregate  some  $6,500,- 
000,000  of  corporate  possession.  Besides 
these  great  groups  of  railroads,  manufactur- 
ing corporations,  public  debts,  banks,  and 


'  For  many  years,  as  is  well  known,  the  Pennsylvania  liail- 
road  Company,  the  largest  railroad  cori)oratioii  iu  the  country, 
was  not  listed  on  the  New  York  Stock  Exchange. 


88  The  Corporation 

insurance  companies,  there  are  the  myriad 
lesser  companies  in  every  city,  town,  and 
hamlet,  each  year  engrossing  a  larger  and 
larger  share  of  the  business  of  the  land. 
Every  year  and  every  place  sees  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  firm  succeeded  by  the  cor- 
poration. Their  number,  no  one  knows. 
No  statistics  include  them.  Not  even  the 
tax  gatherer  reaches  all.  The  corporations, 
so  to  speak,  visible  in  great  masses,  cover 
more  than  a  quarter  of  the  national  wealth. 
Add  the  lesser  and  more  numerous  corpo- 
rations, and  it  is  not  improbable  that  half 
the  wealth  of  the  country  is  held  by  a  cor- 
porate title,  direct  or  indirect. 

Realty  remains  as  yet  under  private  own- 
ership, except  as  it  is  held  by  corporations 
for  the  purpose  of  carrying  on  their  busi- 
ness. But  realty  cannot  long  escape  the  op- 
eration of  causes  which  have  engulfed,  in 
due  order,  the  banking,  the  insurance,  the 
transportation,  the  manufacturing,  and  the 
distribution  of  the  country.  Great  realty 
corporations  own  a  large  part  of  the  area 


The  Corporation  89 

of  Paris.  Their  shares  are  favorable  forms 
of  small  investment.  They  give  those  of 
small  capital  their  part  in  the  profits  of  city 
realty  and  the  unearned  increment.  The 
realty  corporation  has  begun  to  appear  here 
in  New  York.  It  takes  no  prophetic  in- 
stinct to  predict  that  here,  as  in  other  fields, 
the  corporation  will  take  the  place  of  the 
individual.  The  great  estate  and  the  indi- 
vidual owner  will  both  disappear  before  the 
corporation  in  the  ownership  and  manage- 
ment of  city  real  estate,  as  the  individual 
has  disappeared  in  each  of  the  other  great 
fields.  The  department  store  and  the  news- 
paper, the  hotel  and  the  restaurant,  have 
already  gone  through  this  change  in  Eng- 
land and  are  visibly  passing  through  this 
change  here.  The  farm  may  for  a  season 
resist  the  movement,  and  may  remain  the 
last  example  of  direct  personal  ownership 
when  the  other  four-fifths  of  the  property 
of  the  country  is  held  by  corporations. 

The  number  and  capital  of  corporations 
has   a   steady  proportional    growth    in    all 


9©  The  Corporation 

lands.  Under  all  laws,  there  is  a  want 
of  correspondence  between  the  nominal 
capital  of  corporations  and  the  real  value 
of  the  property  they  represent ;  but  the 
capital  in  new  companies  is  a  measure, 
if  no  more,  of  the  steady  progress  of  prop- 
erty from  individual  or  personal  to  cor- 
porate titles.  It  is  now  sixteen  years  since 
a  Belgian  journal  (Moniteur  Interete  Materiels) 
published  a  return  of  the  issue  of  new  se- 
curities in  this  country  and  Europe  for  six- 
teen years,  1871-1886,  inclusive.  The  ag- 
gregate in  this  period  was  $21,366,000,000. 
Of  this  sum,  only  a  third  ($7,005,000,000) 
was  represented  by  railroads  and  industrial 
enterprises  ;  twelve  per  cent.  ($2,563,920,000) 
by  bonds ;  and  the  remainder,  a  little  over 
half  ($11,807,608,000),  was  of  public  issues. 
But  it  is  noticeable  that  through  this 
period,  these  decreased,  and  railroads  and 
industrial  enterprises  increased.  In  the 
first  3^ear  recorded,  1871,  of  issues  of  $3,118,- 
000,000,  seventy-four  per  cent,  were  public 
loans  ;  ten  per  cent.,  banks  ;  and  but  sixteen 


The  Corporation  91 

per  cent.,  railroads  and  factories.  In  1886, 
out  of  $1,341,000,000,  only  forty-six  per  cent, 
were  public  loans ;  eight  per  cent.,  banks ;  and 
forty-six  per  cent.,  railroads  and  factories. 
The  first  year  was,  one  must  remember,  the 
period  of  heavy  issues  of  public  loans  by 
France,  Italy  and  other  European  countries, 
and  the  last  a  period  of  industrial  expansion  ; 
but  this  is  the  course  new  issues  have  taken  for 
thirty  years.  They  were  once  three-quarters 
public  loans.  They  are  to-day,  in  almost  this 
proportion,  the  shares  and  bonds  of  com- 
panies, in  transportation,  production,  manu- 
facture and  distribution.  In  1903,  the  same 
authority  gives  the  total  world  issues 
(United  States,  Japan,  and  China  incom- 
plete), as  $3,602,434,100,  evenly  divided 
into  reissues  $1,758,942,330  and  new  de- 
mand $1,913,491,728.  Of  the  last,  govern- 
ments issued  but  26.84  per  cent.  In  all,  the 
world's  new  issues  in  full  years  are  $2,000,- 
000,000  to  $2,500,000,000  ;  but  in  poor  years, 
1894  or  1895  for  instance,  as  low  as  $1,000,- 
000,000. 


92  The  Corporation 

These  issues  are,  in  a  large  measure,  in 
exchange  for  shares  and  bonds  already  is- 
sued, but  on  the  average  this  re-issue  can- 
not be  more  than  a  third  of  the  whole,  and 
is  in  general  less.  The  London  Economist, 
1881-1890,  gave  the  new  capital  placed  on 
the  English  market  at  £1,326,000,000,  of 
which  £1,083,000,000  were  money  calls  or 
seventy-nine  per  cent,  of  the  whole.  The 
aggregate  of  these  issues  has  reached  a  level 
in  England,  no  longer  exceeded.  The  ag- 
gregate in  1881,  £190,000,000,  and  in  1889, 
£207,000,000,  has  not  since  been  exceeded, 
but  the  average  for  the  five  years  1897-1901, 
was  £155,097,000,  and  in  the  five  years 
1881-1885,  £100,600,000.  The  large  recent 
totals  are,  it  is  true,  due  to  government 
issues,  sixty-one  per  cent,  in  1901.  and  forty 
per  cent  in  1900,  but  even  these  mark  the 
conversion  of  private  funds  into  a  public 
mortgage  and  the  proportion  of  govern- 
ment loans  was  as  large  in  earlier  j^ears.  In 
round  numbers,  each  year  in  England  sees, 
on  the  average,  $500,000,000  go  into  new 


The  Corporation  93 

corporations,  railroads  and  industrials, 
against  $300,000,000  some  twenty  years  ago. 
These  are,  however,  literally  from  compan- 
ies the  world  over.  The  corporations  organ- 
ized in  the  last  ten  years  in  the  United 
Kingdom  numbered  38,928,  and  had  a  cap- 
ital of  $2,800,000,000. 

In  Germany,  the  aggregate  of  new  cap- 
ital asked  for  was  $500,000,000  in  1902; 
$452,150,000  in  1901  ;  and  $394,800,000  in 
1900 ;  but  three-fifths  of  them  are  public 
loans  (in  1902,  sixty-two  per  cent.)  and  the 
commercial  corporations,  industrial,  rail- 
way, etc.,  are  small  compared  with  those 
of  England  or  this  country,  in  1902,  $23,- 
590,000.  Where,  in  1896,  there  were  in 
Germany,  376  companies  with  a  capital  of 
128,483,700  marks  ($32,120,925),  there  were, 
in  England,  4,291  joint  stock  companies 
with  a  nominal  capital  of  £264,517,977. 
A  like  disparity  exists  with  other  European 
countries,  Russia,  in  1896,  having  companies 
with  a  capital  of  239,424,000  roubles.  In  an 
Asiatic  country,  like  India,  with  fourfold  the 


94  The  Corporation 

population  of  the  United  States,  and  nearly 
the  population  of  Europe,  there  were,  in  1896, 
1,309  with  a  nominal  capital  of  41,891,447  R., 
and  a  paid  up  capital  of  27,668,773  R. 

Whether  the  corporation  be  or  be  not  the 
measure  of  civilization,  there  is  no  question 
that  property  tends  to  pass  under  corporate 
title,  in  a  tolerably  close  relation  to  the  ad- 
vance in  the  social,  industrial,  and  financial 
organization  of  any  country.  Under  Ori- 
ental law  and  custom,  as  under  early  Ro- 
man law,  and  at  many  points  in  civil  law, 
as  finally  summed  up  in  the  Code  Napoleon, 
the  family  itself  has  a  certain  corporate 
unity,  is,  if  one  do  not  press  this  legal  ter- 
minology too  far,  a  quasi  corporation.  The 
child,  b}^  birth,  acquires  certain  property 
rights,  a  quasi  franchise  in  the  family  prop- 
erty and  succession  of  which  no  testamen- 
tary act  can  divert  him.  In  Hindu  and 
Mohammedan  family  law,  in  the  usage  and 
custom  of  Chinese  society,  the  family  is  a 
continuous  succession,  whose  living  mem- 
bers hold  little  more  than  a  life  interest  in 


The  Corporation  95 

the  family  property.  Custom  and  prescrip- 
tion render  its  free  transfer  and  sale  diffi- 
cult in  habit  and  practice,  though  possible 
at  law,  and  no  parent  can  deprive  his  chil- 
dren of  all  their  inheritance.  The  wife's 
dower  right  in  realty  is  the  last  shred  in 
our  common  law  of  this  continuous  suc- 
cession and  property  right,  and  it  will 
doubtless,  like  the  right  of  courtesy  enjoyed 
by  the  husband,  be  gradually  retired  by 
statute.  With  the  disappearance  of  this 
vested  family  interest  won  by  descent,  of 
which  recent  English  legislation  has  left  so 
little,  and  to  which  our  own  statutes  and 
decisions  are  so  unfriendly,  there  steadily 
grows  the  mobile  corporate  title  which,  in 
the  bond,  passes  by  delivery ;  in  the  case  of 
the  share,  passes  by  registry  ;  and  when  in- 
dorsed in  blank,  under  a  long  series  of  de- 
cisions (not  of  late  altogether  consistent), 
giving  legal  force  to  the  law  merchant's 
usage  or  the  custom  of  the  Stock  Exchange, 
the  share  itself  passes  from  hand  to  hand 
by  delivery.     If  of  persons,  we  can  say  with 


9^  The  Corporation 

Sir  Henry  Maine  that  the  progress  of  society 
is  measured  by  the  change  from  status  to 
contract,  so  of  property  we  may  say  that 
another  measure  of  civilization  is  tlie  prog- 
ress of  property  from  an  immobile  title  un- 
der the  joint  ownership  of  that  natural  and 
indissoluble  corporation,  the  family,  created 
by  status  and  in  the  earlier  stages  of  society, 
knowing  no  transfer  for  realty,  to  the  mobile 
title  of  the  artificial  corporation  created  by 
law.  These  corporate  titles  to  property  tend 
more  and  more  to  pass  from  hand  to  hand 
by  delivery,  their  testamentary  disposition 
is  in  this  country  and  in  England  unre- 
stricted. No  status  acquired  by  birth  gives 
control  of  them.  It  doubtless  still  remains 
true  that  they  and  their  usufruct  can  be  en- 
tailed for  a  life  and  lives  in  being ;  but  the 
courts  regard  this  with  no  friendly  eye  and 
are  perpetually  seeking  to  limit  the  exercise 
of  this  power.  Exactly  as  political  power  was 
once  a  concomitant  of  descent,  blood  and 
race,  not  to  be  acquired  through  any  indi- 
vidual or  personal  act  by  the  pereyrimcs  or 


The  Corporation  97 

metoikos,  and  has  come  to  be  a  right  acquired 
over  a  great  area  like  our  own  national  ter- 
ritory made  up  of  associated  sovereignties 
by  a  mere  change  of  domicile,  and  is,  among 
most  civilized  nations,  gained  by  naturali- 
zation or  the  territorial  birth  of  the  chil- 
dren of  the  alien,  so  property  under  the  in- 
fluence and  working  of  the  corporation, 
tends  to  develop  and  change  from  condi- 
tions under  which  it  passed  chiefly  and  as 
far  as  realty  was  concerned  only  by  birth, 
to  a  corporate  title  which  passes  at  will  and 
in  whose  ownership  and  on  whose  transmis- 
sion birth  has  no  necessary  influence  or  claim 
whatsoever.  From  status  to  contract  for  the 
person,  from  immobile  titles  indissolubly  as- 
sociated with  the  family  bonds  to  mobile  titles 
created  by  corporate  ownership — these  are  the 
twin  changes,  parallel,  analogous,  and  similar, 
through  which  persons  and  property  pass  in 
the  development  of  society. 

Nor,  since  this  is  true,  since  status  for 
persons  matches  family  ownership  in  prop- 
erty, and  contract,  corporate  titles,  is  it  sur- 


98  The  Corporation 

prising  that  the  corporation  overshadows 
widely  as  it  develops  and  its  title  engrosses 
a  larger  and  larger  share  of  the  gross  prop- 
erty of  any  community  ?  In  its  develop- 
ment, we  are  plainly  contemplating  not  the 
mere  accretion  and  aggregation  of  property 
to  be  represented  by  some  shapeless  pre- 
historic and  semi-savage  figure  stalking 
around  about,  over  and  on,  the  rights  of  the 
"  common  people,"  but  the  final  and  inevi- 
table form  in  which  property  rights  are  to  be 
cast.  Exactly,  as  the  democratic  republic  is 
one  in  which  political  right  and  power  are 
diffused  among  "  the  people  "  and  is  period- 
ically exercised  at  recurrent  intervals  by  the 
general  body  of  qualified  citizens,  so  the 
great  reservoir  of  national  property,  which 
matches  the  reservoir  of  stated  national 
political  power,  is  destined  to  be  steadily 
and  continuously  divided  into  a  great  mass 
of  corporate  titles,  represented  by  bonds  and 
shares,  whose  transfer  becomes  easier  and 
easier,  for  which  law  and  custom  steadily 
create  a  readier  sale  and  which  might,  if 


The  Corporation  99 

their  diffusion  is  actually  in  progress,  finally 
give  an  ownership  of  property  by  corporate 
title  as  complete,  as  general,  and  as  evenly 
distributed  as  the  right  of  suffrage.  Men 
are  alike  in  having  but  one  vote ;  but  men 
vary  greatly,  for  good  reasons  and  ill, 
through  the  justifiable  exercise  of  their 
powers  and  their  unjustifiable  use,  in  their 
influence  over  votes  cast.  So  also,  it  is 
plain,  that  there  might  come  a  time,  first 
in  great  corporations,  and  later  in  corporate 
property  as  a  whole,  in  which  the  diffusion 
of  property  was  extreme,  though  its  con- 
trol was  in  the  hands  of  a  few.  Something 
like  this  is  already  apparent  in  corporations 
with  many  thousands  of  shareholders,  but 
whose  real  control  remains  in  a  small  gov- 
erning group,  holding  but  a  small  share  of 
the  total  aggregate  of  shares  individually, 
though  voting  an  overwhelming  majority 
of  the  shares  held  by  others.  They  con- 
stitute, in  short,  a  corporate  "  machine," 
which  matches  in  its  development  the 
political  machine. 


loo  The  Corporation 

Yet  whatever  analogies  may  be  drawn 
between  the  development  of  personal  rights 
and  corporate  property  titles,  we  are  all 
aware,  that  the  widening  shadow  of  the 
corporation  which  has  eclipsed  individual 
ownership  for  half  the  property  of  the 
United  States  and  is  plainly  destined  to  em- 
brace all,  except  possibly'-  farm  lands,  is  re- 
pugnant to  our  industrial  ideals.  Exactly 
as  the  Greek  philosopher  saw  in  the  small 
city,  where  every  citizen  could  be  known 
to  every  other  responsible  participant  in  the 
common  sovereignty,  the  ideal  state,  so  our 
industrial  and  economic  ideal  looks  to  the 
small  and  individual  property  or  business 
unit.  Exactly  as  we  deem  the  State  hap- 
piest, where  land  tends  to  divide  and  sub- 
divide into  the  small  farm  held  by  the 
single  farmer  and  capable  of  being  worked 
by  him  with  a  hired  man  or  two,  so  our 
economic  ideal  is  the  shop  or  the  factory, 
which  has  been  created  by  one  individual, 
is  owned  by  one  man  or  a  small  firm,  has 
its  small  force  of  hired  operatives,  and  is 


The  Corporation  loi- 

throughout  personal  and  individual  in  its 
inception,  management,  and  ownership.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that  the  number  of  mercan- 
tile firms  in  thirty  j^ears  has  grown  three 
times  as  fast  as  population  or  twice  as  fast 
as  wealth,^  there  is  a  perpetual  lament,  often 
by  college  professors  from  whom  one  might 
at  least  expect  some  effort  to  learn  the  facts, 
of  the  disappearance  of  the  days  when  a 
man  could,  with  a  small  capital,  start  a 
small  business,  see  it  grow,  and  enjoy  an 
independent  economic  activity  akin  to  that 
of  the  small  farmer  or,  one  may  add,  the 
small  Greek  city  of  the  fifth  century  be- 
fore Christ  or  the  mediaeval  borough  of 
the  twelfth  or  thirteenth  century  after. 
Public  feeling,  ordinary  editorial  and  popu- 
lar discussion,  and  even    economic   theory 


'  The  number  of  mercantile  concerns  engaged  in  busine.S9  in 
the  United  States  in  1866,  according  to  the  best  obtainable  in- 
formation, was  about  160,000.  During  the  past  twenty-five 
years,  the  number  of  mercantile  concerns  has  about  doubled, 
and  is  now  1,300,000  (Dun's  Review,  April  9,  1904,  p.  7). 
The  increase  in  number,  1866  to  1904,  thirty-nine  years,  is 
eightfold.  Population  in  this  period  has  a  little  more  than 
doubled,  and  wealth  has  quadrupled. 


102  The  Corporation 

contemplate  the  vast  growth  of  corporate 
wealth,  much  as  we  can  imagine  Aristotle 
aghast  at  the  United  States  as  an  arena  for 
self-government.  Its  size  would  appal,  its 
bulk  affright,  and  he  would  regret  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  small  city  with  its  vivid 
life,  its  immediate  responsibility  and  its 
individual  civic  activity.  It  is  probably 
true,  in  spite  of  the  very  great  increase  of 
separate  firms,  an  increase  so  much  faster 
than  population  or  wealth  that  there  never 
was  so  good  or  so  easy  a  chance  to  start  in 
business  as  just  now  (except  to-morrow), 
that  the  relative  importance  of  the  firm 
and  the  individual  man  has  very  greatly 
decreased,  is  diminishing,  and  tends  to  dis- 
appear. The  modern  career  is  not  there. 
It  is  in  the  great  corporation,  in  its  man- 
agement or  in  its  service,  in  its  ownership 
or  in  being  owned  by  it.  Sometimes  both. 
No  men  are  often  more  completely  the 
slaves  of  great  corporations,  than  those  at 
their  head.  Many  of  them,  though  fabu- 
lously  rich,   work  hard  all  their  lives  on 


The  Corporation  103 

board  wages,  and  enjoy  no  fruit  but  the 
sense  of  accretion  which  is  quite  as  un- 
conscious when  a  man  is  about  so  rich  as 
when  a  man  is  about  so  fat. 

The  corporation,  especially  in  its  later  de- 
velopment in  the  ''  Trust," — which  is  after 
all  only  a  very  big  corporation  with  a  very 
loose  constitution  as  exactly  suited  to 
arbitrary  power  as  is  a  new  overgrown  em- 
pire— is  therefore  held  by  all  instinctively 
to  be  opposed  to  the  individual.  Since  the 
small  business  begun  on  a  small  capital  is 
less  and  less  the  accepted  career  of  success, 
though  more  numerous  than  ever,  the 
general  conclusion  is  that  as  the  corporation 
grows,  the  individual  withers.  Yet  so  far 
as  the  ownership  of  property  goes,  the 
corporation  has  enormously  added  to  the 
individual  opportunity.  In  a  primitive 
community,  there  is  nothing  for  any  one  to 
own  but  a  few  personal  implements.  All 
are  poor  and  starving.  This  condition 
existed  for  JBons.  Its  gates  can  always 
be    reopened    by    destroying    the    delicate 


104  The  Corporation 

and  organized  activities  on  which  rest  the 
general  supply  of  the  necessities  of  life  so 
widely  enjoyed  by  all  to-day  that  famine 
has  ceased  to  be  a  peril  in  civilized  com- 
munities. 

As  society  develops  there  is  little  but  land 
to  own,  and  this  is  worth  little  to  any  but 
those  who  cultivate  it.  In  our  colonial 
communities,  disposable  wealth  was  owned 
by  very  few  and  they  made  money  very 
rapidly.  Banking  and  business  profits  were 
inordinately  large  and  the  man  who  got  a 
little  the  start  of  his  neighbors  could  early 
retire  and  sweat  heavy  interest  out  of  the 
community  on  a  small  capital.  The  small 
worker,  mechanic  or  professional  man,  had 
next  to  nothing  in  which  he  could  invest, 
one  hundred  or  one  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago.  There  were  no  savings  banks,  no  life 
insurance  and  no  corporation  shares.  Banks 
and  business  were  all  on  a  famil}^  basis. 
The  whole  country  was  in  the  condition  of 
some  rural  southern  communities  where 
there  is  nothing  in  which  to  invest  and  no 


The  Corporation  105 

one  can  make  money  except  the  small  shop- 
keeper, and  relative  to  the  savings  of  the 
rest  of  the  community,  he  makes  a  great 
deal.  This  early  industrial  condition  has 
left  its  depressing  record  in  the  long  succes- 
sion of  legislation  from  Solon  down — to  use 
the  name  as  the  convenient  designation 
of  a  group  of  facts — which  seeks  to  ame- 
liorate the  condition  of  debtors.  Such  laws 
always  come  in  the  period  between  the  early 
organization  of  industry  and  of  the  eco- 
nomic state  and  the  creation  in  some  form  of 
mobile  titles  to  property  in  which  every  one 
can  share.  Until  the  corporation  makes  in- 
vestments possible  for  the  individual,  no  one 
has  any  chance  to  share  in  the  general 
growth  and  uplift  of  the  community,  but 
the  banker  and  business  man  who  loans 
and  manages  his  own  capital  charging  the 
heavy  interest  and  making  the  heavy  profits 
familiar  in  our  colonial  period  and  in  all 
new  countries. 

The  corporation,  instead  of  rendering  more 
difficult  the  position   of  the  average  indi- 


io6  The  Corporation 

vidual  man  with  only  the  average  initiative 
and  average  earnings,  gives  him  the  only 
hope  he  has  had  from  the  beginning  of  a 
general  share  in  the  profit-making  activ- 
ities of  society.  Under  the  organization  of 
society  where  the  individual  started  in  busi- 
ness, banking  and  manufacture,  and  in- 
dividual ownership  was  the  rule,  the  owners 
of  the  industrial  agencies  of  society  were 
few  and  those  employed  by  them  were 
many.  The  reverse  comes  to  be  true  under 
the  corporation.  The  stage  coach  lines  of 
seventy  and  eighty  years  ago  were  owned  by 
small  firms  and  had  hundreds  of  employees. 
The  railroads  of  the  United  States  in  1902 
had  1,189,315  employees,  and  the  number 
of  persons  owning  shares  and  bonds  were 
950,000,  as  estimated  in  1897.  As  will  be 
shown  below,  the  number  of  shareholders 
grows  faster  than  that  of  employees.  It  is 
altogether  probable  to-day  that  the  number 
of  railroad  employees  is  little  greater  than 
the  number  of  share  and  bondholders, 
an   equality    which    never   existed    in    the 


The  Corporation  107 

ownership  of  the  iustru merits  of  transporta- 
tion earlier.^  The  older  the  company,  the 
more  numerous  the  shareholders.  In  the 
Old  Colony  Railroad,  the  average  holding 
is  twelve  shares.  The  Boston  and  Albany 
in  1894  had  8,220  shareholders  and  5,902 
employees.  It  is  true  of  most  of  the  New 
England  railroads  to-day  that  the  share- 
holders exceed  in  number  the  employees. 
It  is  probably  a  mere  question  of  time  when 
first  railroads  and  later  industrial  corpora- 
tions will  have  more  owners  than  employees. 
A  great  trading  company,  like  Lipton's,  in 
England,  has  already  reached  this  point, 
with  75,000  shareholders  in  1898.  A  great 
department  store  in  this  country  will  usu- 
ally have  six  to  ten  owners  and  from  3,000 
to    7,500    employees.     To-day,    these    are 


'Sereno  S.  Pratt,  WorWs  Work,  December,  1903,  quotes 
an  estimate  in  1897  of  the  holders  of  stocks  of  railroads,  as 
950,000.  This  would  be  ouly  half  the  capital  and  call  for  twice 
this  to  own  the  bonds  as  well.  The  Michigan  Railroad  Com- 
missioner, in  1893,  gave  $372,761,847  of  shares  of  railroads  in  that 
state  as  held  by  16,627  persons  of  whom  1,038  lived  in  the  state. 
This  was  an  average  of  224  shares.  Extending  this  for  the 
country  would  give  about  550,000  owners  of  shares  and  Ijonda. 


io8  The  Corporation 

either  firms  or  small  family  corporations. 
Let  them  once  take  the  corporate  form, 
their  shares  become  a  field  for  investment 
and,  like  Lipton's,  the  shareholders  will  be 
more  numerous  than  the  employees.  In 
the  Pullman  Palace  Car  Company,  in  1894, 
at  the  time  of  the  great  strike,  there  were 
4,497  employees  on  the  average  for  1893 
and  3,200  shareholders.  Of  these,  1,600 
were  women  and  300  trust  estates  and  insti- 
tutions. No  fair-minded  man,  called  to 
consider  the  conflicting  claims  of  capital 
and  labor,  could  fail  to  weigh  the  claims  of 
1,600  women,  300  trusts  and  institutions 
and  1,300  other  shareholders  as  numer- 
ically representing  interests  as  important  to 
the  thrift,  stabilit}^  and  well-being  of  the 
community  as  the  employees.  Increasingly, 
under  the  great  corporation,  the  view  that 
the  community  has  to  consider  the  few  in 
dealing  with  the  profits  of  capital  and  the 
many  in  apportioning  wages  is  destined  to 
disappear. 

This  distribution  of  corporate  wealth  is 


The  Corporation  109 

universal.  The  corporations  of  France  are 
owned  by  about  7,000,000  holders,  a  num- 
ber about  as  large  as  the  realty  holders  in 
the  Republic.  The  average  holdings  of 
French  railroad  shares  range  from  twelve 
of  five  hundred  francs  each  in  the  Western 
Company  to  eighteen  in  the  Northern. 
This  is  a  proportion  far  below  our  average 
holding,  which  may  be  roughly  estimated 
at  from  thirty  to  forty  shares  for  most  of  the 
New  England  roads,  about  ninety  in  the 
Middle  States  and  in  railroads  like  the  Il- 
linois Central,  and  twice  this  in  other 
Western  lines.  In  France  the  registered 
railroad  debentures,  $2,000,000,000  in  par 
value,  have  656,194  certificates,  an  average  of 
$3200  to  the  certificate.  About  two-thirds  of 
French  railroad  securities  are  registered,  and 
the  rest  pass  from  hand  to  hand.  At  the 
close  of  1889,  when  these  facts  were  collected 
by  M.  Neymarck,  the  holders  of  French 
railroads,  whose  market  value  was  $32, 
000,000,000,  must  have  been  nearly  1,000,000. 
This  property  reverts  to  the  state  between  1953 


no  The  Corporation 

and  1960,  when  the  concessions  expire.'  It 
is  certainly  a  grave  question  whether  the  gen- 
eral stability  of  society  will  be  best  promoted 
by  the  presence  of  this  army  of  small 
holders  (whose  average  holding  in  1890 
yielded  $87.60  a  year),  or  by  state  ownership. 
Where  the  corporation  is  large,  the  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  shareholders  goes 
on  with  inexorable  regularity.  The  Penn- 
sylvania Railroad  had  in  1880,  13,867  share- 
holders, in  1890,  21,200,  and  in  1904,  44,- 
500.  The  average  holding  remained  for 
many  years  almost  unchanged,  new  issues 
meeting  the  increase  in  shareholders.  The 
average  holdings  were  99.33  in  1880 ;  sank 
to  86.73  in  1884 ;  rose  to  108.72  in  1889, 
and  sank  from  this  point  to  97.20  in  1893. 
Panic  came  and  the  return  of  large  blocks 
from  England,  and  in  1903,  the  average  was 
sixty  shares,  in  spite  of  large  purchases  by 
insurance  companies.  In  every  period  of 
depression  there  comes  the  increase  in  the 
number  of   the  small  holders,  and  no  in- 

*  Paris  Statistical  yociety,  1890. 


The  Corporation  1 1 1 

crease  in  shares  can  greatly  alter  this  rela- 
tive position.^  The  New  York,  New  Haven 
and  Hartford  had  in  1887,  3,545  share- 
holders, with  a  capital  of  $15,500,000  ;  in 
1893,  5,319,  with  a  capital  of  $32,938,000, 
and  in  1904,  11,032,  with  a  capital  of  $54,- 
685,000.  Holders  and  capital  have  trebled 
together,  and  the  average  holding  has  re- 
mained substantially  unchanged.  Where 
one  can  go  back  earlier,  the  increase  is  still 
more  remarkable.  The  New  York  Central 
and  Hudson  River  Railroad  was  consoli- 
dated in  1869,  with  1,212  shareholders.  B}' 
1891,  twenty-two  j^ears  later,  they  had 
grown  almost  eightfold  to  9,505.  The  Il- 
linois Central  had,  in  1884,  2,217  share- 
holders (exclusive  of  the  Dutch  Trust),  an 
average  of  110,  and  in  1893,  4,823,  an  aver- 
age of  ninety-three. 

All  corporations  show  this  steady  in- 
crease in  the  number  of  their  owners.  The 
American   Express   Company,    founded  by 

'  See  account  of  increase  in  Hhareholdere  in  the  panic  of  1893, 
New  York  Sun  August  8,  1893. 


1 1 2  The  Corporation 

two  or  three  men,  had  recently  4,080  share- 
holders, forty  shares  to  the  holder.  The 
shareholders  in  the  Bell  Telephone  Com- 
pany were  3,639  in  1896,  and  6,882  in  1898.' 
In  1881,  the  Western  Union  Telegraph 
Compan}!^  had  1,701  shareholders;  in  1891 
4,645,  and  in  1904,  12,242.^  It  is  also  note- 
worthy that  in  1881  brokers  held  391,054 
shares  and  investors  408,946 ;  while  ten 
years  later  brokers  held  178,666  shares  and 
investors  683,334,  a  proportion  more  than 
maintained  since,  so  that  the  increased  own- 
ership was  accompanied  by  a  decrease  as 
constant  in  the  use  of  these  shares  as 
counters  in  the  stock  market. 

The  distribution  of  ownership  is  in  prog- 
ress more  rapidh^  in  industrial  corporations 
than  in  any  other.  The  Standard  Oil  Com- 
pany, when  first  organized,  had  forty-five 
shareholders.  In  1891,  it  had  1,675.  In 
1901,  it  had  4,000,  and  the  number  now  is 
considerably  larger.      A  newspaper  list,  in 

'Boston  News  Bureau,  September   10,    1896,  and  April  28, 
1898. 
*  Official  Return,  Mss. 


The  Corporation  113 

1901,  gave  the  shareholders  of  twenty-five 
trusts,  with  a  capital  of  $850,105,725,  at 
56,208.^  Among  these  was  the  Standard 
Oil,  and  its  increase  of  nearly  one  hundred- 
fold in  its  owners  was  probably  equaled  by 
the  other  corporations.  From  twenty  to 
thirty  years  ago,  five  hundred  or  six  hundred 
persons  probably  owned  the  various  prop- 
erties to  which  56,208  holders  enjoyed  title 
in  1901.  When  the  Sugar  Trust  was  first 
organized  in  1885,  the  refineries  consoli- 
dated had  not  over  250  to  300  owners.^  At 
its  last  meeting,  the  American  Sugar  Re- 
fining Company  had  11,000  shareholders. 
The  Trust,  when  organized,  melted  ninety 
per  cent,  of  the  sugar  used  in  the  United 
States,  and  the  separate  refineries  divided 
the  profits  among  some  three  hundred  per- 
sons. The  Trust  melts  now  about  half  the 
sugar  used  in  the  United  States,  and  pays 
dividends  to  about  thirty-sevenfold  more 
persons.     A  small  hall,  nineteen  years  ago, 

'New  York  Commercial  Bulletin,  Deceml>er  6,  1901. 
''This  statement  is  made  on  the  highest  personal  anthority. 


114  ^'^^  Corporation 

would  have  seated  the  owners  of  all  the 
sugar  refineries.  To-day,  no  two  opera- 
houses  could  hold  them.  In  1885,  their 
250  to  300  owners  employed  about  6,000 
wage-earners.  In  1903,  the  11,000  share- 
holders of  the  Sugar  Trust  were  hiring  from 
7,000  to  8,000  wage-earners,  if  those  em- 
ployed were  in  proportion  to  the  sugar 
melted.  In  all  the  sugar-refining  industry 
in  1900,  only  14,262  wage-earners  were  em- 
ployed. 

This  is  the  general  experience.  The  total 
number  of  iron  and  steel  establishments  in 
1870,  were  808,  and  in  1880,  1,005.  The 
primary  iron  and  steel  establishments,  fur- 
naces, ingot  and  rail  mills,  were  owned  by 
not  over  1,500  persons  in  1870,  and  by 
2,000  or  more  in  1880.  A  decade  ago,  when 
a  number  of  iron  and  steel  plants  were  un- 
der corporate  ownership,  the  total  number 
of  owners  was  probably  from  5,000  to  10,- 
000,  at  a  most  liberal  estimate.  The  Steel 
Trust,  American  Steel  Corporation,  was  or- 
ganized with  15,000  common    and   10,000 


The  Corporation  115 

preferred  shareholders,  in  the  companies  it 
absorbed/  In  two  years  this  number  has 
trebled.  It  is  a  mere  (juestion  of  time 
when  even  in  this  corporation,  the  share- 
holders will  exceed  the  wage-earners.  If 
the  purchase  of  shares  by  those  emplo^^ed 
by  the  company  continues  as  it  has  begun, 
in  spite  of  the  surrender  of  many  shares, 
the  plant,  in  the  end,  will  be  owned  by 
those  who  work  in  it.  Steadily,  this  great 
change  takes  place.  The  men  employed  in 
a  plant  know  its  capacity  and  condition. 
They  have  confidence  in  it.  The  country 
over,  in  railroads  and  industrial  corpora- 
tions, the  purchase  of  shares  by  employees 
continues,  just  as  the  local  ownership  of 
railroads  mounts  and  increases.  Each  year 
sees  Western  States  owning  more  of  their 
own  railroads. 

What  is  true  of  these  greater  corporations 
is  true  of  lesser  ones.  Two-thirds  of  the 
manufacturing  product  of  Massachusetts,  or 
1594,112,374  out  of  a  total  of  $945,183,889, 

'  Wall  Street  Summary,  February  18,  1903. 


1 16  The  Corporation 

is  produced  by  1,347  corporations  and  $90,- 
013,319  by  nineteen  industrial  combina- 
tions.^ The  corporations  are  owned  by  45,- 
649  persons,  over  a  tenth  as  large  a  num- 
ber as  are  employed  in  manufactures,  395,- 
294.  About  one-fourth  ($261,068,199)  of 
the  product  is  produced  by  3,139  firms, 
which  have  4,846  members.  If  these  two 
classes  employ  wage  earners  in  proportion 
to  their  product,  the  corporations  have  45,- 
649  owners,  and  245,000  employees,  and 
the  firms,  4,846  owners  and  106,000  em- 
ployees. 

The  diffusion  of  ownership  through  cor- 
porations is  in  progress  in  all  fields.  The 
National  Banks  of  the  country  in  1876,  were 
owned  by  146,000  persons  when  they  had  a 
capital  of  $501,568,564.  In  1902  their  capi- 
tal had  risen  not  quite  one-half,  to  $701,- 
990,554,  and  the  owners  were  330,124,  over 
double.  Nor  does  this  express  all,  for  two- 
fifths  of  the  National  Bank  stock  in  Boston 
is  held  by  savings   banks.     Life  insurance 

•  statistics  of  Manufactures,  Massachusett-s,  1902. 


The  Corporation  1 1 7 

policies  rose  from  679,690  in  1880  to  4,160,- 
088  in  1902,  sixfold,  and  the  sum  insured 
only  fivefold,  from  $1,564,138,532  to  $8,- 
701,587,912,  a  decrease  in  the  average 
policy. 

Between  them  the  holders  of  17,608,212 
life  insurance  policies,  regular  and  indus- 
trial, and  6,666,672  savings  bank  depositors, 
own  assets  to  the  amount  of  $4,841,000,- 
000,  and  of  this  $2,000,000,000  is  corpora- 
tion shares  and  bonds.  Making  every 
allowance  for  duplications,  there  is  still 
here  a  broad  base  of  ownership  which 
widens  by  millions  the  diffusion  of  property 
rendered  possible  by  the  corporation  and  its 
mobile  titles. 

This  distribution  has  its  sharp  limits. 
The  average  holding  in  savings  banks  is 
$418  ;  in  life  insurance  is  $2,090  ;  in  Na- 
tional Bank  shares,  twenty-four,  or  $2,400  ; 
and  in  our  larger  railroads,  from  $3,000  to 
$9,000,  with  some  having  an  average  holding 
in  par  value  of  $1,200  to  $3,000.  These  are 
low  averages,  measured  against  the  past,  but 


1 1 8  The  Corporation 

they  do  not  penetrate  far  into  the  mass  of 
the  community.  Figures  like  these  exclude. 
The  savings  bank  account  is  often  the  ref- 
uge of  the  well-to-do.  The  other  sums 
measure  accumulations  above  the  average. 
But  the  size  of  these  holdings  steadily  di- 
minishes. Each  decade  sees  them  smaller. 
They  are  sweeping  through  the  community. 
With  all  their  manifold  duplications,  they 
mark  the  elevation  of  entire  strata  of  the 
community  to  the  level  of  a  divided  but 
real  share  in  capital,  and  the  work  of  the 
employer. 

The  diffusion  of  ownership  is,  so  long  as  it 
is  restricted  to  these  larger  sums,  of  less  im- 
portance to  the  great  mass  than  freedom  of 
employment.  Initiative,  opportunity,  and 
security  are  the  three  requirements  of  a  free 
life.  Life  must  be  open  to  a  man,  to  begin 
for  himself.  There  must  be  opportunity  for 
advance.  Security  must  be  created  for  the 
steady  wage  and  provision  for  age.  Unless 
these  things  exist,  any  economic  system 
must  be  held  wanting. 


The  Corporation  \  1 9 

So  far  as  mere  employment  goes,  the  case 
could  be  unhesitatingly  rested  on  the  last 
census.  The  assertion  is  constantly  made 
that  the  gate  of  employment  is  closing. 
Yet  those  engaged  in  gainful  occupations  in- 
creased one-half  faster  than  the  population, 
from  1880  to  1900.  These  are  the  twenty 
years  in  which  the  corporation  has  cast  its 
shadow  over  the  land.  In  these  years, 
population  has  grown  one-half,  from  50,- 
155,783  to  76,303,387.  Those  engaged  in 
gainful  employments  have  risen  from  17,- 
392,099  in  1880,  to  29,285,922  in  1900,  over 
two-thirds.  The  share  at  gainful  work 
yearly  grows.  It  was  a  bare  third  in  1880. 
It  was  over  this  fraction  by  4,000,000  in  1900. 
It  was  twenty-nine  per  cent,  in  1880.  It 
was  thirty-eight  per  cent,  in  1900.  Yet  the 
increased  demand  of  a  more  complete  or- 
ganization with  this  increase,  raised  the  per 
cent,  employed  from  47.3  per  cent,  to  50.3. 
Plainly  there  is  more  work  for  any  man 
willing  to  seek  it. 

The  mere  opening  of  work  is,  however, 


120  The  Corporation 

but  little,  unless  a  man  can  rise  and  ad- 
vance. Opportunity  must  second  initiative. 
The  substitution  of  corporate  for  family 
ownership  has  done  for  industry  what  the 
abolition,  by  the  French  Revolution,  of 
privilege  in  the  army  did  for  the  advance 
of  able  men.  The  family  firm  or  corpora- 
tion holds  the  gate  against  ability.  The 
Trust,  the  great  corporation,  opens  it.  Its 
chiefs  come  from  the  ranks  and  the  dinner- 
pail.  Thirty  years  ago,  the  scientific  and 
technical  schools  saw  their  graduates  hunt- 
ing jobs.  To-day,  the  Trust  job  hunts  them. 
The  schools  cannot  graduate  them  fast 
enough.  The  entire  class  will  be  engaged 
before  commencement.  The  greater  corpo- 
rations are  looking  for  the  abler  young  men 
and  using  systematic  reports  to  secure  them. 
When  a  family  plant  is  absorbed  into  a 
Trust,  the  disappearance  of  son  and  cousin, 
and  the  appearance  of  the  friendless  young 
man  to  take  charge,  is  constantly  noted. 
For  the  technically  educated  young  man  of 
parts  and  push,  of  head  and  hustle,  the  new 


The  Corporation  i  2 1 

mammoth  corporation  has  brought  both  in- 
itiative and  opportunity. 

For  men  less  high  and  less  well-equipped 
in  the  industrial  scale,  the  result  is  relatively 
less  fortunate.  Wage  is  steadier.  There  is 
more  of  it.  The  relations  with  the  union 
and  with  organized  labor  generally  are  more 
easily  conducted.  Bigger  men  are  employed 
in  the  adjustment  on  both  sides.  The  hori- 
zon is  wider.  There  is  more  desire  for  a 
working  settlement  than  for  a  personal  vic- 
tory. But  the  man,  for  any  reason  dis- 
charged and  blacklisted,  finds  all  avenues 
closed  by  a  great  Trust  monopolizing  a  trade. 
Pension  systems  are  easier  for  the  large  cor- 
poration ;  but  once  in  operation,  no  new 
man  is  taken  on  over  thirty-five  years  old. 
The  man  past  his  first  youth  finds  all  doors 
closed  under  the  pressure  of  a  new  organiza- 
tion which  seeks  to  run  its  plant  at  its  high- 
est speed.  In  this  new  militant  organization 
of  the  armies  of  industry,  the  educated 
technician  finds  himself  in  the  position  of 
an  officer.     His  commission  and  rank  are 


122  The  Corporation 

good  EDywhere.  The  mechanic  and  laborer 
have  something  of  the  security  and  the  limi- 
tations of  a  private.  He  cannot  safely  re- 
sign. If  collision  comes,  perhaps  with  some 
captious  foreman,  and  a  man  is  discharged 
or  leaves,  he  is  likely  to  be  treated  as  a  de- 
serter. He  is  not  wanted  unless  he  is  young 
and  strong,  and  equal  to  modern  pressure. 
These  differences  explain  much  of  the  op- 
position to  Trusts  among  laboring  men,  and 
their  acceptance  by  the  technically  educated. 
Manifestly,  as  the  pace  increases,  and  work 
grows  hard  to  bear  and  harder  to  get  for 
mechanic  and  laborer  by  fifty  years  of 
age,  the  old  age  pension  by  the  State  and 
not  by  the  employer,  paying  only  his 
own,  must  be  necessary  to  maintain  a  just 
balance. 

Neither  ownership  nor  employment,  how- 
ever, gives  control ;  and  control  is  security. 
Initiative  and  opportunity,  without  security, 
lead  straight  to  disaster,  to  the  loss  of  the 
investor  and  the  capricious  or  uncertain  em- 
ployment of  labor.     Control  and  ownership 


The  Corporation  123 

are  no  longer  wedded.  In  twenty-four 
Trusts  which  Mr.  J.  D.  Jenks  examined, 
there  were  only  five  in  which  the  five 
largest  owners  held  a  majority  of  the  com- 
mon stock,  and  but  eight  in  which  this  was 
true  of  the  preferred.  In  not  one  did  any 
one  man  hold  a  majority.  Mr.  J.  D.  Rocke- 
feller is  not  credited  with  holding  a  major- 
ity of  Standard  Oil.  In  many  industrials 
and  railroads  to-day,  the  governing  group 
no  longer  holds  a  majority.  The  man  or 
group  controls  as  does  the  strong  man  armed 
who  holds  his  new-made  empire.  The  par- 
allel is  close.  A  business  genius  for  com- 
mand, plan  and  organization  creates  a  trade, 
as  conquerors  once  carved  kingdoms.  An 
industrial  peace  and  stability  is  established. 
Those  who  prosper  by  it  in  dividends,  sur- 
render control,  as  France  gave  up  her  liber- 
ties to  Louis  XIV,  and  never  regained  them. 
All  about,  this  is  in  progress,  where  supine 
stockholders  let  some  Rockefeller  exercise  a 
secret  industrial  despotism  as  long  as  divi- 
dends are  lavish  and  secure. 


124  'I'^^  Corporation 

This  is  the  old  fight  in  a  new  form  and 
on  a  new  field.  What  are  the  evils  of  the 
trust  and  of  the  modern  corporation  ?  Se- 
crecy, irresponsible  autocracy  and  personal 
privilege.  What  is  this  but  the  old  work 
of  despotism  ?  The  absence  of  corporation 
reports  matches  the  closed  and  personal 
public  treasuries  of  the  despot.  The  con- 
trol of  a  man  or  men,  independent  of  a 
majority — this  irresponsible  autocracy  is  as 
old  as  the  history  of  despotism.  The  special 
contracts  and  side  profits  of  those  in  corpo- 
rate control — what  are  these  but  the  monop- 
olies, the  grants,  the  imperial  and  royal 
plunder  of  past  centuries?  These  all  run 
parallel  to  the  evolution  of  the  state  in  the 
past.  First  an  era  of  plundering,  cut-throat 
competition.  Peace  is  created  by  some  strong 
man.  His  empire  is  organized.  There  grow 
up  suffrages  and  rights.  The  despotic  ex- 
ecutive seeks  to  treat  the  organized  State 
like  a  family  or  personal  property. 

Two  opposed  and  different  perils  are  cre- 
ated by  these   conditions,    often    confused, 


The  Corporation  125 

both  calling  for  reformatory  legislation  and 
new  criminal  statutes,  but  both  precisely 
analagous  to  the  risks  and  the  dangers  to 
Society  which  have  been  in  the  past  success- 
fully surmounted  in  the  creation  of  the 
political  organization  of  the  State.  A  vast 
mass  of  corporate  property  owned  by  thou- 
sands of  individual  shareholders,  whose 
control  rests  with  their  tacit  or  expressed 
consent  in  the  hands  of  a  few  men,  more 
interested  in  the  exploitation  of  the  prop- 
erty and  its  uses,  for  their  personal  fortune, 
than  in  either  the  profits  of  shareholders  or 
the  public  service  of  the  community,  gives 
on  the  one  hand  opportunities  to  corrupt 
the  State,  and  on  the  other  to  plunder  the 
shareholder. 

The  State,  its  executive  authority,  its 
judiciary,  and  its  legislation,  are  all  three 
under  the  shadow  not  of  mere  individual 
property  holders,  which  would  be  serious 
enough,  but  of  the  vast  aggregate  created  by 
the  fact  that  a  few  such  holdings  will  con- 
trol a  corporation  manifold  larger,  or  a  few 


126  The  Corporation 

able  men  with  but  little  personal  interest 
in  a  corporation,  maintain  themselves  in  a 
position  of  command  as  long  as  shareholders 
receive  dividends,  as  to  whose  source  not 
one  of  them  cares  to  be  careful.  The  prac- 
tical result  is,  as  every  one  is  aware,  that 
there  are  in  every  city  reformers  denouncing 
the  bribery  of  legislators  and  the  corruption 
of  the  judiciary,  who  themselves  hold  shares 
in  corporations  whose  profits  rest  on,  or  are 
promoted  by,  these  acts.  Deprived  of  the 
power  to  protect  himself  by  corporation 
acts  which  render  it  easy  for  the  promoter 
to  establish,  and  the  astute  manager  to  con- 
trol a  corporation,  the  shareholder  ceases 
to  feel  a  moral  responsibility,  and  there  are 
in  every  American  community  a  large  num- 
ber of  men  and  women  who  with  every  pay- 
ment of  dividend  or  interest,  are  sharing  in 
profits  drawn  from  methods  which  they 
denounce  and  abhor. 

Exactly  as  modern  European  states  in 
their  early  stages  found  themselves  forced 
to   deal  with   private  wars,  carried  on  by 


The  Corporation  127 

noble  or  condottier,  whose  body  of  armed 
men  was  kept  together  by  plunder  which 
the  military  genius  of  its  leader  enabled  him 
to  secure,  and  with  the  destructive  industrial 
effects  of  vast  monasteries  and  guilds  which 
constituted  an  industrial  imperium  in  im- 
perio,  threatening  the  sovereignty,  limiting 
the  power  of  taxation,  and  paralyzing  the 
industrial  functions  of  the  State,  so  the 
modern  State  finds  itself  facing  precisely 
similar  dangers  from  predatory  industrial 
and  financial  warfare,  carried  on  by  the 
managers  of  great  corporations,  and  from 
the  success  with  which  the}^  can  levy  toll 
on  great  industries  and  aid  a  body  of  share- 
holders living  on  capital  earlier  amassed, 
as  did  the  monk  and  nun,  on  property  ac- 
cumulated from  a  period  when  the  monas- 
tery and  convent  was,  as  it  was  from  the 
eighth  to  the  twelfth  centuries,  an  indis- 
pensable instrument  of  civilization  and  edu- 
cation. Here  again,  the  conditions  of  the 
past  repeat  themselves,  and  the  instrument 
of  the  past,  adequate  law,  is  the  only  sure 


128  The  Corporation 

method  by  which  like  evils  csin  now  be  re- 
dressed. 

The  real  issue  in  both  these  cases  is  that 
the  State  has  failed  to  extend  over  these 
new  corporations  the  authority  of  its  own 
laws.  It  permits  their  reports  to  be  secret, 
their  operations  to  be  veiled,  untouched  by 
its  inspection  or  scrutiny.  It  has  left  the 
shareholder  on  his  side,  without  knowledge 
of  the  accounts  of  the  corporation  and  with- 
out power  either  to  control  its  affairs,  or  re- 
dress his  own  grievances.  The  shareholder 
himself  occupies  a  double  position.  He  is 
on  the  one  side,  a  citizen,  suffering  from 
whatever  injuries  the  state  suffers,  and  on 
the  other,  the  owner  of  property  which  he 
is  unable  to  control  and  whose  management 
he  is  prevented  from  scrutinizing.  Under 
our  system  we  have  permitted  the  useful 
fiction  of  state  sovereignty  to  introduce  on 
a  large  scale  corporations,  which,  except  in 
the  field  of  interstate  commerce,  are  acting 
in  sovereignties,  whose  authority  they 
evade.     In    England,   the   shareholders   of 


The  Corporation  129 

the  larger  corporations  live  within  an  area 
which  makes  their  annual  meeting  a  real 
gathering  for  discussion  on  the  affairs  of  the 
corporation.  Here,  shareholders  are  so 
scattered  that  this  has  ceased  to  be  possible 
in  some  cases,  and,  in  all  has  ceased  to  be 
usual.  These  differences,  often  forgotten, 
and  never  full}^  considered  in  the  discussion 
of  the  corporation,  do  not,  however,  change 
the  essential  issue.  The  State  faces,  in  all 
the  various  forms  of  the  problem  presented 
by  corporations,  essentially  the  same  factors 
which  from  the  beginning  have  beset  its  de- 
velopment ; — the  question  whether  the  vari- 
ous agencies  which  society  employs  shall  be 
more  powerful  than  the  State  or  shall  be 
under  its  control.  It  was  this  issue  which 
was  raised  by  the  executive  or  "  crown  " 
until  it  was  brought  within  the  bounds  of 
law.  The  religious  organization  of  society 
once  raised  the  same  issue.  The  industrial 
organization  has  passed  through  the  same 
steps  and  it  faces  a  situation  in  which  the 
three  factors  concerned,  the  sovereignty  of 


130  The  Corporation 

the  State,  the  duty  of  the  citizen,  and  the 
responsibility  of  the  shareholder  are  joined 
in  a  common  moral  obligation  to  see  to  it 
that  the  sovereignty  of  the  State  continues 
in  fact,  as  well  as  in  name,  a  sovereignty 
working  through  law,  and  not  through 
men,  to  the  end  that  this  be  a  government 
of  laws,  and  not  of  men. 

Those  who  share  the  national  or  corporate 
citizenship,  burgher  and  noble  in  the  past, 
shareholder  and  bondholder  to-day,  have 
the  old  choice  —  a  struggle  for  liberty 
through  law  or  the  acceptance  of  personal 
despotism.  Nor  can  despotism  be  more  suc- 
cessful in  industry  than  in  the  State.  Out 
of  liberty  alone  comes  lasting  security. 
The  rule  that  rests  on  a  man  dies  with  him. 
The  small  shareholder  can  do  little ;  but 
he  can  urge  on  the  state  laws  which  will 
curb  the  despot  in  industry  as  other  like 
laws  once  curbed  another  executive.  Re- 
ports can  be  required,  publicit}'^  enforced, 
and  personal  responsibility  imposed.  These 
in  the  past  have  freed  the  State.    They  will 


The  Corporation  131 

free  the  corporation.  They  were  needed  by 
the  one.  They  are  needed  by  the  other. 
In  a  new  scene,  the  old  battle  is  again 
joined.  The  real  issue  presented  b}^  modern 
corporations  is  whether  the  State,  by  its  laws, 
and  the  new  corporation  citizen,  holding 
the  franchise  as  shareholder  in  these  new 
industrial  empires,  shall  be  strong,  one  by 
passing  laws  and  the  other  by  using  their 
legal  powers,  to  complete  the  cycle  of  in- 
dustrial rule  and  empire  by  introducing  the 
reign  of  law.  No  State  can  remain  lawless 
and  under  personal  tyranny  in  its  industry 
and  enjoy  liberty  through  law  in  its  polit- 
ical institutions.  The  corporation  must  be 
subject  to  law  or  law  will  be  subject  to  the 
corporation.  Nor  is  it  to  be  thought  of  that 
the  stream  of  liberty  which  from  high  an- 
tiquity has  flowed,  having  won  political 
freedom,  is  to  lose  itself  in  the  sands  and 
mire  of  industrial  tyranny.  Instead,  law 
will  bring  liberty  and  liberty  law  in  this 
field  as  in  the  other.  Regular  reports,  a 
gradual    training    in    self-government,    an 


132  The  Corporation 

awakening  sense  of  civic  responsibility  in 
the  corporation,  as  earlier  in  the  State,  will 
cure  the  evils  we  now  see.  But  this  re- 
quires in  the  corporation  the  same  sacrifice, 
the  same  courage  and  the  same  resolute 
battling  for  rights  which  the  same  struggle 
has  always  demanded  in  the  State.  The 
New  Jersey  charter  is  an  attempt  to  keep 
the  forms  of  self-government  in  an  industrial 
state  and  provide  no  constitutional  instru- 
ment for  their  exercise.  A  sound  compan- 
ies' act  in  England  has  bred  a  spirit  and 
habit  of  responsibility.  It  will  here,  and 
such  an  act  will  come  here.  It  will  make 
the  corporate  executive  subject  to  law  and 
penalty  as  has  been  done  earlier  for  the  ex- 
ecutive in  the  State.  The  problem  is  the 
same,  the  solution  the  same,  and  the  tri- 
umph will  be  the  same.  Where  the  fathers 
won  political  self-government,  this  great 
population  of  shareholders  will  win  indus- 
trial self-government.  This  security  once 
gained  for  this  advantaged  class,  it  will 
broaden   down  as  civil  security  did.     There 


The  Corporation  133 

will  be  the  same  succession  of  the  strong 
ruler,  the  privileged  class,  and  the  wider 
and  wider  sway  of  common  rights.  Out 
of  it  all  will  come  a  democratic  industrial 
economy,  giving  as  has  the  State,  initiative, 
opportunity,  and  security  to  all  its  indus- 
trial citizens. 


Ill 

THE  UNION 
By  Rev.  George  Hodges,  D.  C.  L. 


Ill 

THE    UNION 

The  Trade  Union  will  probably  occupy 
a  long  chapter  of  our  social  history.  It 
will  enlist  a  majority  of  the  skilled  work- 
ers, and  a  great  multitude — perhaps  even- 
tually a  majority — of  the  unskilled.  It 
will  be  taken  into  partnership,  reluctantly 
but  inevitably,  by  most  employers,  and 
will  be  the  conventional  medium  of  com- 
munication between  the  master  and  the 
man.  It  will  enter  into  politics,  where  it 
will  be  a  totally  new  factor, — presenting 
itself  as  a  new  party  with  new  interests  and 
demands,  or  affecting  and  perhaps  domi- 
nating one  or  both  of  the  old  parties.  The 
effective  organization  of  the  working  peo- 
ple under  a  democratic  form  of  government, 
with  manhood  suffrage,  is  a  new  phenome- 
non.    Nobody  knows  how  it  will  work. 


138  The  Union 

It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  the 
long  chapter  which  the  union  will  con- 
tribute to  our  social  annals  will  last  to  the 
end  of  the  book.  It  is  but  one  in  a  series 
of  chapters  which  contain  the  story  of  the 
progress  of  the  hand-worker.  He  was  for 
many  centuries  a  slave,  having  no  rights 
except  such  as  he  shared  with  other  domes- 
tic animals.  Then  he  was  for  centuries  a 
serf,  in  some  measure  free,  but  bound  to 
his  feudal  lord,  and  attached  indissolubly 
to  the  soil.  Then  he  became  a  wage- 
earner,  with  enlarged  independence,  and 
even  some  power  as  a  member  of  a  guild, 
but  with  no  voice  in  the  nation  ;  and  pres- 
ently, when  steam  and  the  machine  pro- 
duced the  mill,  he  was  worse  off  than  the 
serfs,  or  even  than  the  slaves,  his  ancestors. 
Out  of  this  depression  he  emerged,  at  the 
end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  as  a  member  of  a  trade  union. 
It  is  probable  that  there  will  be  other, 
higher,  and  better  stages.  The  working 
man,  disciplined  by  the  union,  raised  from 


The  Union  139 

the  condition  of  dependence  into  which  he 
was  thrust  by  the  great  industry,  and  im- 
pelled by  new  ideas,  new  ambitions  and 
new  opportunities,  is  likely  to  advance  still 
further.  There  is  a  dramatic  element  in 
the  story  of  his  progress  which  predicts  a 
crisis  and  a  culmination  far  in  the  future. 
Indeed,  what  we  are  studying  here  is  the 
ascent  of  man,  the  steady  march  of  the 
plain  man,  out  of  a  social  state  akin  to  that 
of  his  cousins  in  the  jungle,  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven.  It  is  that  for  which  we 
pray  in  the  Lord's  prayer,  and  in  which  we 
affirm  our  faith  when  we  say  in  the  Creed 
that  we  believe  in  the  Catholic  Church. 
It  is  the  slow  realization  of  that  universal 
commonwealth  of  God,  into  whose  privi- 
leges of  citizenship  all  people,  even  the 
least,  shall  be  admitted. 

Meanwhile,  here  is  the  union,  the  con- 
temporary stage  of  this  long  progress,  per- 
haps the  most  significant  of  present  social 
facts,  demanding  consideration.  It  is  as 
inevitable    as   the   weather ;    to   refuse   to 


140  The  Union 

recognize  it  is  like  refusing  to  recognize  the 
wind  and  the  rain.  To  imagine  that  it 
may  be  disregarded,  or  that  by  some  proc- 
ess of  legislation  it  may  be  happily  abol- 
ished, is  as  idle  as  the  endeavor  to  keep 
back  the  rising  tide  with  the  kitchen  mop. 
This  I  infer  not  so  much  from  the  great 
multitude  of  working  men,  increasing  every 
year,  who  are  making  their  way  into  the 
union,  as  from  the  persistent  growth  of  the 
union  movement  in  the  face  of  the  most 
powerful  opposition.  It  has  met  the  full 
force  of  English  law,  interpreted  and  ap- 
plied by  hostile  Parliaments  and  hostile 
judges,  and  has  taken  the  law  captive.  It 
has  faced  an  almost  universally  adverse 
public  opinion  and  has  steadily  converted 
its  enemies.  It  has  encountered  the  de- 
termined resistance  of  employers,  and  has 
gone  into  battles,  coming  out,  in  the  main, 
victorious.  It  has  had  its  martyrs  and  con- 
fessors, and  its  humblest  people  have  mani- 
fested in  its  behalf  a  spirit  of  sacrifice  such 
as  is  commonly  aroused  by  love  of  country 


The  Union  141 

or  by  love  of  God.  It  has  even  gained  im- 
portant victories  over  itself,  learning  the 
lessons  of  experience,  growing  in  self- 
restraint  and  in  wisdom.  These  are  mat- 
ters which  make  for  permanence.  In  the 
presence  of  so  serious  a  movement,  grounded 
so  deep  in  history  and  in  human  nature, 
enlisting  the  religious  devotion  of  such  mul- 
titudes of  men  and  steadily  progressing 
over  every  hindrance,  we  do  well  to  enquire 
what  the  trade  union  means.  This  is  the 
question  to  which  this  lecture  is  an  answer. 
Certain  aspects  of  the  union  are  such  as 
to  meet  the  unhesitating  approval  of  most 
persons.  I  mean  particularly  the  pro- 
visions which  are  made  for  the  care  of 
working  men  in  the  time  of  sickness  and 
when  out  of  work,  and  for  the  relief  of 
their  widows  and  orphans.  These  bene- 
ficiary features  are  a  part  of  the  life  of  a 
majority  of  the  unions,  especially  in  Great 
Britain,  where  more  is  made  of  them  than 
in  this  country.  During  the  ten  years 
which    began    with     1890     one    hundred 


142  The  Union 

English  unions  distributed  among  the  dis- 
abled, the  superannuated,  and  the  needy, 
forty-five  millions  of  dollars.  The  union, 
in  this  aspect  of  it,  is  a  huge  insurance  com- 
pany. It  relieves  the  poor  man  from  some 
of  the  stress  of  anxiety.  Every  member 
knows  that  if  he  is  hurt,  he  will  be  nursed  ; 
when  he  gets  too  old  to  work,  he  will  be 
cared  for  at  home  without  fear  of  the  alms- 
house ;  and  when  he  dies,  the  brethren  will 
support  his  family.  The  sum  which  the 
individual  receives  is  small,  but  it  often 
makes  the  difference  between  distress  and 
comfort. 

There  is,  however,  an  element  of  uncer- 
tainty in  these  beneficent  arrangements. 
The  funds  which  are  in  the  treasury  of  the 
union,  no  matter  for  what  purpose  they 
were  originally  collected,  nor  what  name 
they  bear  in  the  accounts,  are  all  liable  to 
be  taken  for  the  maintenance  of  a  strike. 
They  are  contributed  with  that  understand- 
ing. It  is  true  that  the  occasion  for  such  a 
general  levy  comes  very  rarely.     It  may  be 


The  Union  143 

compared  to  the  sale  of  the  altar  vessels  in 
a  time  of  extreme  emergency.  But  it  is  a 
constant  possibility.  That  is,  all  the  bene- 
ficiary features  of  a  union,  to  which  even 
opponents  give  their  approbation,  are  dis- 
tinctly subordinated  to  another  purpose  for 
which  essentially  the  union  exists.  That 
purpose  is  the  maintenance  of  a  certain 
standard  of  living.  This  is  the  goal  of  all 
trade-union  efforts.  It  is  the  formula  of 
the  trade-union  ideal.  It  is  the  heart  of  the 
whole  matter.  The  unionist  would  gain 
and  preserve  for  himself  and  his  brethren 
such  rates  of  wages,  such  regulation  of  the 
length  of  the  working  day  and  such  condi- 
tions under  which  his  tasks  and  theirs  may 
be  performed,  as  shall  best  conduce  to  the 
happiness  of  his  life,  the  growth  of  his 
body,  mind,  and  soul,  and  the  welfare  of  his 
family.  The  man  who  toils  with  his  hands 
was  once  treated  as  an  animal,  then  as  a 
machine ;  now  he  demands  to  be  considered 
as  a  man. 

The  willingness  of  the  union  to  sacrifice 


144  ^^  Union 

to  this  purpose  such  sacred  funds,  to  subor- 
dinate to  it  the  interests  of  the  sick,  the 
aged,  the  widow  and  the  orphan,  is  largely 
due  to  a  conviction  on  the  part  of  the  work- 
ing man  that  he  belongs  to  a  separate  and 
immutable  social  class.  The  time  was  when 
every  man  of  parts  felt  that  he  might  rise 
above  the  conditions  into  which  he  had 
been  born.  He  might,  indeed,  for  the 
moment,  be  working  with  his  hands  under 
the  obedience  of  a  master,  but  to-morrow, 
or  the  day  after,  he  would  himself  be  in  a 
position  of  authority.  He  would  have  his 
apprentices  under  him.  That  time  seems 
to  have  passed  :  or,  at  least,  the  working 
man  believes  that  it  has  passed.  It  is  true 
that  conspicuous  men  are  now  living  who 
have  made  their  way  into  high  places  from 
the  humblest  beginnings.  It  is  true  also 
that  careful  observers,  such  as  Mr.  John 
Graham  Brooks,  hold  that  the  "  solidified 
group  consciousness  that  constitutes  class 
feeling "  is  difficult  to  maintain  in  this 
country.     It  is  noticed,  for  example,  that 


The  Union  145 

the  labor  official,  making  his  way  upward 
out  of  the  ranks  of  the  manual  workers, 
easily  enters  into  business  or  into  politics. 
A  certain  flux  is  undoubtedly  in  progress, 
so  that  the  class  lines  are  not  yet  rigidly 
drawn.  There  is  probably  less  class  feeling 
among  those  who  constitute  what  we  com- 
monly call  the  "  better  classes  "  than  ever 
before. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  conditions  of 
profitable  industry  have  changed  even  in  a 
generation.  It  is  increasingly  difficult  for 
the  workman  to  own  the  tools  which  are 
necessary  for  his  work.  The  tool  is  a 
machine,  and  its  belts  run  to  a  great  engine 
or  its  wires  to  a  great  dynamo.  The  largest 
salary  of  the  skilled  worker  will  not  permit 
him  to  aspire  to  this  new  ownership.  It  is 
true,  morever,  from  this  and  other  reasons, 
that  the  hand-worker  himself  is  more  and 
more  convinced  that  he  is  a  member  of  a 
class.  Mr.  John  Mitchell's  book,  "  The  Or- 
ganization of  Labor,"  rests  the  whole  trade- 
union    movement  upon  the  foundation  of 


146  The  Union 

this  asserted  social  fact.  The  working  man 
belongs  to  a  social  class,  out  of  which  he 
does  not  expect  to  rise.  There  he  is,  and 
there  he  will  remain.  When  he  expected  to 
be  a  capitalist,  or  at  least  a  master,  the 
pains  of  hard  labor  were  endured  as  an  ap- 
prenticeship, as  an  unpleasant  initiation,  as 
a  bearing  of  the  yoke  in  one's  youth.  Now 
he  is  convinced  that  both  he  and  his  neigh- 
bors must  go  on  under  these  burdens  forever, 
unless  something  can  be  done  to  lighten  the 
burdens.  Thus  he  comes  to  have  class  in- 
terests, into  which  he  enters  as  naturally, 
and  to  which  he  brings  as  strong  and  de- 
vout an  enthusiasm,  as  did  ever  ecclesiastic 
to  his  order.  He  is  persuaded  that  what- 
ever affects  his  class,  for  good  or  for  ill,  af- 
fects him ;  and  that  he  can  get  no  relief  for 
himself  or  his  children  except  by  measures 
which  concern  the  welfare  of  the  whole 
working  class. 

Fixed  thus,  as  he  believes,  in  a  social 
class,  he  perceives  that  the  level  of  life 
is    like    the    level  of  water.      When   the 


The  Union  147 

level  of  the  lake  is  lowered  in  any  part,  the 
whole  lake  seeks  that  level ;  and  according 
to  a  similar  law,  the  low  wage  affects  all 
other  wages.  Accordingly,  the  working 
man,  knowing  the  immediate  relation  be- 
tween a  low  wage  and  a  low  standard  of 
living,  finds  a  personal  peril  in  the  inor- 
dinate cheapening  of  labor  in  any  locality. 
By  the  sure  operation  of  the  law  of  indus- 
trial gravitation,  such  cheapening  menaces 
his  own  pay  and  with  it  the  comfort  of  his 
home,  the  health  of  his  family,  and  the  ed- 
ucation of  his  children.  A  familiar  illustra- 
tion is  the  opposition  of  the  union  to  the 
importation  of  Chinamen.  The  Chinaman, 
the  union  says,  has  an  oriental  standard  of 
living,  which  is  very  different  from  the 
American  standard.  He  has  no  domestic 
life,  no  interest  in  books  and  pictures,  and 
no  appetite,  and  is  willing  to  subsist  on  next 
to  nothing.  Once  he  is  established  here,  he 
constitutes  a  lower  level  of  living ;  and  to 
that  lower  level  the  working  man  in  Fall 
River  and  Manchester  must  eventually  ad- 


148  The  Union 

just  himself.  Whoever  will  compete  with 
the  Chinese  will  have  to  live  in  the  Chinese 
way. 

That  the  working  man  is  a  member  of  a 
separate  social  class  is  thus  the  initial  asser- 
tion of  trade-unionism.  All  its  plans  and 
policies  are  based  upon  it.  "  The  wage- 
earner  has  made  up  his  mind  that  he  must 
remain  a  wage-earner.  He  has  given  up 
the  hope  of  a  kingdom  to  come  where  he 
himself  will  be  a  capitalist,  and  he  asks  that 
the  reward  of  his  work  be  given  him  as  a 
working  man."  Belonging  thus  to  a  dis- 
tinct social  class,  he  is  intent  on  raising  and 
maintaining  the  standard  of  living  of  his 
class.  This  he  purposes  to  do  by  combina- 
tion. Thus  his  social  theory  passes  into 
action. 

The  working  man  clearly  perceives  that 
as  an  individual  he  is  at  a  disadvantage  in 
dealing  with  his  employer.  All  the  busi- 
ness odds  are  on  the  side  of  the  business 
man.  He  is  the  better  educated  of  the  two, 
is    commonly  more  shrewd  in  bargaining, 


The  Union  149 

and  has  incomparably  less  at  stake.  The 
employer  is  concerned  about  his  profits ; 
the  working  man  is  concerned  about  his 
living.  To  the  employer  it  matters  little 
whether  this  man  or  another  stand  at  the 
machine.  He  need  be  at  no  pains  to  attend 
to  his  complaint  or  consider  his  petition. 
If  the  man  is  not  satisfied,  let  him  go  out 
and  give  place  to  another.  But  suppose 
that  the  man  has  bought  a  piece  of  ground 
and  put  a  house  on  it ;  suppose  that  he  has 
a  family  ;  suppose  that  his  interests  and  his 
friends  are  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  mill, 
and  his  children  are  at  school  around  the 
corner.  These  are  reasonable  suppositions, 
being  the  natural  inferences  from  a  normal 
human  life.  Under  these  circumstances  the 
man  cannot  go,  except  at  a  bitter  sacrifice. 
That  is,  in  the  bargain  between  the  employer 
and  the  individual  workman,  the  employer 
has  little  or  nothing  to  lose  ;  the  individual, 
if  he  loses,  loses  everything.  Moreover,  the 
man,  having  no  money  in  reserve,  cannot 
hold    off"  for  better  terms,   but   must   take 


150  The  Union 

what  he  can  get.  It  is  at  the  profound  dis- 
advantage of  a  forced  sale  that  he  disposes 
of  his  time  and  his  strength,  making  a  bar- 
gain which  affects  his  body  and  his  soul. 

To  the  answer  that  while  this  is  perhaps 
theoretically  true,  yet  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
employer  may  be  trusted  to  do  the  thing 
that  is  right,  the  union  appeals  to  history 
and  to  experience.  A  good  many  employers 
and  capitalists  have  dealt  fairly  and  fra- 
ternally with  their  men.  But  a  good  many 
have  not.  They  have  taken  every  ad- 
vantage of  the  situation.  They  have  beaten 
wages  down  and  hours  up  without  the  least 
regard  to  the  kind  of  life  which  is  thereby 
made  inevitable.  They  have  done  nothing, 
absolutely  nothing,  for  the  needs  of  their 
men,  as  men,  until  compelled  by  law.  They 
have  left  dangerous  machines  unguarded, 
careless  of  accidents,  until  they  were  obliged 
by  law  to  guard  them.  They  have  made 
no  reparation  for  loss  of  limb  or  life  till 
they  were  forced  to  do  so  by  the  courts. 
They  have   paid   no  attention  to  the  con- 


The  Union  151 

ditions  under  which  men  and  women  and 
little  children  labored  until  they  were  or- 
dered to  do  so  by  the  State.  These  things 
are  written  in  statistics.  The  working  man 
has  learned  to  read,  and  he  knows  about  the 
factory  acts  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  Even 
without  a  book,  he  knows  what  life  is  in  a 
great  many  mills.  And  the  result  is  that 
he  dare  not  commit  himself  as  an  individ- 
ual to  the  loving  kindness  of  his  employer. 
He  has  tried  it  and  he  knows  that  it  is  not 
safe. 

He  must  combine,  then,  with  his  brethren. 
They  must  form  a  union.  This  is  the 
genesis  of  the  union.  Only  thus  can  the  men 
make  their  voices  loud  enough  to  reach  the 
master's  ear.  Now  the  employees  in  a  body 
will  present  their  petitions  and  make  their 
complaints.  The  men  demand  that  the 
new  union  be  "  recognized."  That  is,  for 
their  own  reasonable  protection,  for  the 
proper  safeguarding  of  the  right  of  collective 
bargaining,  they  require  to  be  represented 
by  attorney.     If  they  send  their  own  officers 


152  The  Union 

to  deal  with  the  employer  they  will  probably 
be  under  a  swift  necessity  to  elect  new 
officers.  This  is  why  the  union  asks  to  be 
"  recognized."  The  employer  prefers  to  deal 
with  his  own  men,  but  the  men  feel,  with 
reason,  that  such  dealing  keeps  them  at  a 
disadvantage.  Let  him  hear  their  com- 
plaints from  a  representative  who  cannot 
fall  into  disfavor  in  the  mill  and  lose  his 
job.  Thus  the  union  comes  fully  into  being. 
The  first  step  is  the  theory  of  the  existence 
of  a  distinct  working  class ;  the  second  step 
is  the  defence  of  the  interests  of  this  class 
by  combination.  We  are  now  ready  for  an 
authoritative  definition  of  the  trade  union. 
Thus  the}''  describe  it.  "  A  trade  union,  in 
its  usual  form,  is  an  association  of  workmen 
who  have  agreed  among  themselves  not  to 
bargain  individually  with  their  employer  or 
employers,  but  to  agree  to  the  terms  of  a 
collective  or  joint  contract  between  the  em- 
ployer and  the  union.  The  ideal  of  trade 
unionism  is  to  combine  in  one  organization 
all  the  men   employed  or  capable  of  being 


The  Union  153 

employed,  at  a  given  trade,  and  to  demand 
and  secure  for  each  and  all  of  them  a 
definite  standard  of  wages,  hours,  and  con- 
ditions of  work."  ''  It  is  this  principle," 
says  John  Mitchell,  "  the  absolute  and  com- 
plete prohibition  of  contracts  between  em- 
ployers and  individual  men,  upon  which 
trade-unionism  is  founded." 

The  definition  states  the  three  matters 
with  which  this  combination  is  concerned  : 
wages,  hours,  and  conditions.  These  are  the 
basis  of  that  standard  of  living  for  the  sake 
of  which  the  union  exists.  In  its  collective 
bargain  with  the  employer,  the  union 
establishes  a  minimum  amount  of  wages,  for 
less  than  which  no  union  man  may  work  ; 
and  a  maximum  number  of  hours,  which 
no  man  may  be  required  or  permitted  to 
exceed  ;  and  certain  distinctly  specified  con- 
ditions under  which  the  work  is  to  be  per- 
formed. All  this  is  stated  with  such 
clearness  that  there  is  no  difficulty  in 
understanding  precisely  what  the  union 
asks. 


154  1'he  Union 

As  to  wages,  it  would  prescribe  a  mini- 
mum for  the  unskilled  workman  of  six 
hundred  dollars  a  year.  It  is  understood 
that  this  supposes  a  man  capable  of  honestly 
earning  that  amount.  It  does  not  include 
incompetent  persons  who  are  physically, 
mentally,  or  morally  unfit.  It  rejects  va- 
grants, the  vicious,  and  the  constitutionally 
idle.  For  the  lower  strata  of  society  the 
union  has  no  remedy.  It  has  no  use  for 
any  man  who  is  not  fairly  worth  six  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year.  But  it  contends  that 
any  able-bodied,  industrious,  and  diligent 
man  who  is  willing  to  give  his  time  and 
strength  for  the  common  life  is  entitled  in 
return  to  a  decent  living.  He  ought  to 
have  a  house  of  six  rooms,  with  carpets  and 
sufficient  furniture,  made  comfortable  with 
plenty  of  coal  in  the  cellar  and  plenty  of 
meat  on  the  table,  and  made  attractive  with 
pictures.  He  and  his  family  ought  to  be 
seasonably  clad  in  all  weathers ;  his  chil- 
dren should  be  kept  at  school  till  they  are 
sixteen    years    old  ;    and    there    should    be 


The  Union  155 

some  money  in  the  bank  for  illness  and  old 
age.  This,  it  is  reckoned,  can  be  had,  except 
in  the  largest  cities,  for  six  hundred  dollars, 
that  is,  for  two  dollars  a  day.  If  a  business 
is  so  badly  managed,  or  its  products  are  so 
little  wanted,  that  it  cannot  pay  even  its 
unskilled  men  a  living  wage,  then  it  had 
better  stop.  If  it  can  pay  a  living  wage, 
but  will  not  for  the  sake  of  a  larger  profit, 
then  the  sooner  the  attention  of  the  public 
is  called  to  this  state  of  things,  the  better. 
The  second  requirement  sets  the  number 
of  hours.  This  demand  is  made  for  the 
sake  of  humanizing  the  working  man's  life. 
The  question  is  how  many  hours  can  a  man 
work  at  a  difficult,  exacting,  and  monoto- 
nous task,  and  still  have  time  to  be  a  good 
husband  and  father,  a  good  citizen,  and 
a  good  man.  It  is  of  course  plain  that  the 
standards  of  professional  life,  or  of  com- 
mercial life  in  its  better  positions,  do  not 
hold  here.  The  physician,  the  lawyer,  the 
minister,  the  merchant,  the  architect,  the 
engineer,    the    men   of   large    affairs,  work 


156  The  Union 

long  hours.  But  the  work  is  varied ;  it  is 
personally  and  absorbingly  interesting  ;  and 
they  do  it  because  they  will.  They  are  in 
a  very  different  case  who  work  because  they 
must,  and  are,  for  the  time  being,  little 
more  than  a  part  of  a  machine,  filling  with 
their  nerve  and  muscle  a  place  which  the 
inventor  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  filling 
with  wires  and  wheels.  It  is  true  that  a 
hundred  years  ago  in  this  country,  men 
were  commonly  at  work  from  sunrise  to 
sunset ;  but  the  character  of  the  work  was 
for  the  most  part  different.  More  of  it  was 
out  of  doors ;  more  of  it  was  naturally  in- 
teresting to  the  workman.  It  was  done  in 
smaller  groups,  so  that  it  had  the  spirit  of 
comradeship.  And  the  machinery  was  not 
so  complicated  and  imperative  as  it  is  at 
present.  Under  such  conditions  a  man 
might  be  content  to  work  all  day.  The 
day's  work  is  now  a  more  nervous  matter ; 
the  pace  is  much  faster ;  the  machine  is 
more  continuous  and  peremptory  in  its  de- 
mands.    The  work  takes  more  out  of  the 


The  Union  157 

worker  than  ever  it  did.  Even  under  ex- 
cellent conditions,  a  task  which  occupies 
day  after  day  the  hours  from  six  to  six 
leaves  little  time  for  rest  and  recreation,  for 
personal  betterment,  for  family  life,  for  nor- 
mal human  happiness.  Therefore  the 
working  man,  enabled  by  combination  in 
the  union  to  make  his  wishes  known,  is 
diminishing  the  working  day.  From 
twelve  hours  he  has  brought  it  gradually 
down  to  ten,  to  nine,  and  now  to  eight.  He 
has  proved  that  this  decrease  of  hours  is 
good  not  only  for  himself  but  for  his  em- 
ployer. It  means  a  more  efficient  and  a 
more  contented  man,  who  does  more  now  in 
the  short  day  than  ever  he  did  in  the  long. 
Eight  hours  is  the  figure  set  by  the  union 
as  consistent  with  the  American  standard 
of  living. 

Along  with  this  regulation  of  hours  and 
of  wages,  the  union  makes  a  third  require- 
ment. It  would  improve  the  conditions 
under  which  the  work  is  done.  This  means 
the  placing   of  guards    around    dangerous 


158  The  Union 

machinery,  the  liability  of  the  employer 
for  accidents,  the  provision  of  clean  and 
ventilated  workrooms  with  proper  sanitary 
arrangements,  and  the  protection  especially 
of  women  and  children  from  the  abuse  of 
foremen  of  bad  character.  It  means  the 
careful  limitation,  and,  in  the  case  of  chil- 
dren, the  eventual  abolition,  of  such  forms 
of  labor  as  are  destructive  of  American 
family  life.  It  means  that  the  men  shall 
not  be  over-rushed  by  the  setting  of  an  in- 
ordinate pace,  and  that  they  shall  not  be 
subjected  to  fines  imposed  at  the  arbitrary 
word  of  the  foreman.  In  general,  the  union 
is  against  all  such  conditions  as  tend  to- 
wards the  degradation  of  humanity.  It  in- 
sists upon  a  constant  recognition  of  the  fact 
that  the  men  and  women  of  the  mill  are 
men  and  women,  children  of  God  and  not 
cattle.  It  declares  that  the  preservation  of 
the  health,  of  the  comfort,  of  the  integrity 
and  of  the  happiness  of  human  beings  is  of 
supreme  concern  to  the  entire  community  : 
and  that  whoever  is  responsible  for  a  degra- 


The  Union  159 

dation  of  the  human  stock  is  thereby  an 
enemy  to  the  common  good.  It  puts  per- 
sonality above  profit. 

These,  then,  are  the  purposes  for  which 
the  trade  union  exists.  Its  whole  reason 
for  being  is  that  by  combination,  esp  cially 
by  collective  bargaining,  it  may  set  a  gen- 
eral minimum  beneath  which  wages  may 
not  be  depressed,  and  a  general  maximum  of 
hours  which  may  not  be  exceeded,  and 
universal  fair  conditions ;  and  may  thus 
maintain  for  the  working  class  a  proper 
standard  of  living. 

Into  the  process  of  attaining  these  pur- 
poses, enter  of  necessity  great  varieties  of 
human  nature.  There  is  as  much  meanness 
and  as  much  nobility  of  character,  as  much 
of  the  spirit  of  selfishness  and  as  much  of 
the  spirit  of  sacrifice,  as  much  vice  and  as 
much  virtue,  among  the  working  folk  as 
ma}^  be  found  in  other  sections  of  society. 
This  is  a  discovery  which  surprises  every 
new  resident  in  the  social  settlement.  The 
result  is  a  great  difference  in  the  temper 


i6o  The  Union 

and  method  of  different  unions.  They  are 
as  unlike  as  churches.  Some  are  radical, 
some  are  conservative ;  some  are  disposed 
to  listen  to  the  socialists,  most  are  stoutly 
opposed  to  socialism  ;  some  are  inclined  to 
go  into  politics,  most  are  convinced  that  a 
combination  of  the  trade  union  with  the 
political  party  would  defeat  the  best  plans 
of  each  ;  some  are  on  terms  of  amicable 
understanding  with  the  employers,  others 
are  fighting  them  every  way  they  can.  It 
is  observed,  however,  as  an  encouraging 
and  significant  fact  that  a  union  is  self- 
restrained  and  conciliatory,  like  an  in- 
dividual, in  proportion  to  the  number  of 
its  years.  For  example,  the  Brotherhood 
of  Locomotive  Engineers  is  commonly  ap- 
plauded, even  by  opponents  of  unionism, 
who  are  sometimes  heard  to  say  that  union- 
ism would  not  be  so  bad,  if  all  the  unions 
were  like  that.  The  fact  is  that  the  Brother- 
hood had  a  very  turbulent  youth,  in  which  it 
did  a  great  many  most  objectionable  things, 
and  settled   down    into  its   present  steady 


The  Union  161 

habits  as  the  consequence  of  hard  expe- 
rience. The  hasty  strikes  are  mostly  pre- 
cipitated by  the  newest  unions.  They  are 
the  acts  of  men  who  have  not  yet  learned 
discipline,  and  good  judgment,  and  patience, 
and  the  value  of  reason,  in  the  school  of  the 
union. 

These  wide  differences  among  the  unions 
account  for  some  of  the  differences  among 
the  critics.  For  example,  the  presentation 
of  the  union  which  is  made  in  this  lecture 
is  derived  from  the  statements  of  its  most 
sober  and  representative  leaders.  It  ex- 
presses its  best  ideals,  and  is  the  orthodoxy 
rather  than  the  heresy  of  unionism.  It 
will  easily  be  contradicted  by  the  actual 
experience  of  many  persons  towards  whom 
this  union  or  that  has  behaved  impudently 
or  arrogantly,  without  consideration  or 
courtesy  or  justice.  This,  however,  is  no 
more  true  of  the  unions  than  it  is  of  the 
churches.  The  Christian  church,  in  its  long 
history  and  in  its  contemporary  life,  is  open 
to  this  diversity  of  criticism.     It  may  be 


i62  The  Union 

judged  by  its  best  or  by  its  worst,  by  its  suc- 
cesses or  by  its  failures,  by  its  ideals  or  by 
its  blunders.  Shall  the  fair  critic  of  the 
churches  draw  his  conclusions  from  the 
saints  or  from  the  sinners  ?  from  the  con- 
servative communions  or  from  the  eccentric 
sects  ? 

To  this  wide  difference  in  the  method  and 
the  spirit  of  the  existing  unions,  is  to  be 
added  a  certain  roughness  of  manner  which 
must  be  reckoned  with  in  making  up  our 
minds  regarding  them.  This  rudeness, 
which  sorely  prejudices  the  polite,  is  as 
natural  and  as  inevitable  as  the  hardness  of 
the  men's  hands.  It  is  what  we  must  ex- 
pect from  this  constituency.  The  demands 
of  the  union  are  phrased  with  an  unpleasant 
bluntness  ;  the  strikes  which  the  union  or- 
ders not  only  interfere  with  the  serene 
course  of  our  lives  but  have  an  unhappy 
fascination  for  the  more  disorderly  of  the 
people,  until  we  cannot  tell  the  striker  from 
the  ruffian  ;  and  non-union  men  are  treated 
in  a  manner  which  is  cruel  and  savage  to 


The  Union  163 

the  last  degree.  The  truth  is  that  the 
unionist,  whether  he  is  engaged  in  his  toil 
or  in  his  contentions  with  his  employer,  is 
not  a  pleasant  person  to  the  eyes  of  a 
stranger.  All  this,  however,  must  be  taken 
quietly  into  account  by  one  who  would  es- 
timate the  union  and  its  ways  aright. 

These  brutal  proceedings  are  all  bad  and 
must  be  stopped  by  might  of  law  ;  if  need 
be,  by  might  of  arms.  But  while  this  salu- 
tary suppression  is  going  on,  we  may  prop- 
erly remember  that  it  is  not  so  very  long 
ago  since  exceedingly  reputable  persons 
were  engaged  in  much  the  same  business. 
The  spirit  in  England,  for  example,  in  the 
course  of  the  ecclesiastical  disturbances  of 
the  reigns  of  Henry,  Edward,  Mary,  and 
Elizabeth,  was  closely  akin  to  that  which 
animates  the  union  at  its  worst.  The  mat- 
ter then  at  stake  was  the  religious  suprem- 
acy in  England.  The  establishment  for  the 
time  being  was  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
a  union.  In  the  reign  of  Mary,  the  union 
was    the    United    Catholics    of    England. 


164  The  Union 

They  were  determined  that  no  non-unionist 
should  hold  ecclesiastical  office  in  that 
realm,  and  that  no  citizen  should  be  bap- 
tized, or  confirmed,  or  receive  the  sacrament 
of  the  altar,  or  be  married,  or  be  buried,  ex- 
cept at  the  hands  of  an  official  of  the  union. 
Non-unionists  were  insulted,  fined,  forbid- 
den the  right  of  assembly,  and  boycotted. 
Some  of  the  more  obstinate  and  aggressive 
were  put  to  death.  Cranmer,  Ridle}',  and 
Latimer  were  burned  at  the  stake  as  non- 
union bishops.  In  Elizabeth's  day  the 
union  was  the  Brotherhood  of  Anglican 
Churchmen.  In  Cromwell's  day,  it  was  the 
Amalgamated  Association  of  Congregation- 
alists  and  Presbyterians.  They  all  behaved 
alike,  doing  the  same  kind  of  thing  for 
which  we  now  reprobate  the  working  man. 
So  they  did  in  New  England,  when  they 
whipped  the  non-union  Baptists  and  the 
non-union  Quakers.  It  all  belongs  together. 
Whoever  would  understand  what  the  union 
means  to  the  working  class,  has  but  to  read 
Church  history.     The  unionist  is  actuated 


The  Union  165 

by  the  same  motives  which  made  good  men 
persecute  their  brethren.  We  have  now 
grown  wiser.  We  have  many  of  us  come  to 
understand  that  no  cause  is  advanced  by 
that  sort  of  strife.  The  unionist  will  learn 
the  same  lesson.  In  the  meantime,  let 
every  oifense  of  his  against  the  law  and  or- 
der of  the  community,  and  against  the 
liberty  of  the  citizen,  be  sharply  punished  ; 
but  let  us  remember  how  our  fathers  acted, 
how  conscientiously  and  how  mistakenly. 

A  further  consideration  is  also  helpful  in 
order  to  have  a  right  judgment  of  the  union. 
To  the  fact  that  there  is  a  great  difference 
between  the  unions,  some  of  them  being 
good  and  others  not  so  good,  and  to  the  fact 
that  the  ways  of  many  unions  betray  the 
natural  roughness  which  accords  with  rough 
labor,  and  the  natural  infirmities  of  temper 
and  errors  of  judgment  from  which  even 
saints  and  sages  are  not  free,  must  be  added 
a  sharp  suspicion,  often  amounting  to  ani- 
mosity, which  is  the  result  of  hard  experi- 
ence.    The  working  man   is  pretty   firmly 


i66  The  Union 

convinced,  on  a  substantial  basis  of  proved 
facts,  that  his  employer  will  get  the  better 
of  him  if  he  can.  It  is  true  that  these  facts 
do  not  implicate  the  employers  of  our  own 
acquaintance,  whom  we  know  to  be  just 
men,  perplexed  and  often  exasperated  by 
the  difficulties  of  the  present  distress,  but 
totally  resolved  to  do  the  thing  that  is  right. 
These  honorable  employers,  nevertheless, 
fall  under  a  general  distrust  for  which,  as 
they  themselves  confess,  there  is  abundant 
reason.  It  is  this  justifiable  suspicion 
which  impels  the  union,  in  common  self- 
defense,  to  courses  of  action  which  often  dis- 
commode and  annoy  the  public,  and  anger 
the  employer. 

Thus,  the  hour  strikes  and  the  workman 
gathers  up  his  tools,  deaf  to  all  persuasion. 
Another  ten  minutes  and  the  job  will  be 
completed.  No,  not  a  minute,  not  a  second  ! 
This  is  most  unpleasant,  but  it  is  the  logical 
result  of  the  discovery  that  an  inch  widens 
easily  into  a  yard.  The  precious  leisure 
gained   by   long   effort  and  sacrifice  is  in 


The  Union  167 

danger  of  being  encroached  upon,  ten  min- 
utes at  a  time,  till  the  eight  hours  of  labor 
have  become  nine. 

So  with  the  company  store.  Why  not 
trade  cheerfully  at  the  company  store  ? 
Because  the  working  man  has  found  that 
these  purchases  are  made  an  occasion 
whereby  his  wages  may  be  reduced  without 
his  knowledge.  The  amount  of  money  in 
the  envelope  is  as  large  as  ever,  but  by  means 
of  higher  prices  or  of  lower  quality  the 
company  gets  more  of  it  back  at  the  store. 

A  like  suspicion  attaches  to  the  demand 
that  the  union  be  incorporated.  The  objec- 
tion of  the  men  is  only  in  part  to  the  con- 
sequent financial  liability.  This  they  feel 
is  inevitable,  and  the  better  of  them  feel 
that  it  is  just.  It  will  be  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  union,  and  ought  so  to  be  brought 
to  bear,  whether  it  is  incorporated  or  not. 
The  "TaffVale"  decision  sets  a  universal 
precedent.  The  chief  objection  is  that  in- 
corporation means  court  interference :  it 
means  that   the   law  can  dictate   how    the 


i68  The  Union 

affairs  of  the  union  may  be  managed.  This 
diversion  of  beneficiary  funds,  for  example, 
to  the  promotion  of  a  strike, — what  will  the 
judge  say  to  that?  The  union,  after  long 
experience,  suspects  the  judge.  He  is  a 
person,  let  us  say,  of  probity  and  a  fair 
mind,  but  he  is  a  member  of  a  social  class 
administering  the  business  of  members  of 
another  social  class.  He  may  escape  the 
prejudices  but  he  can  hardly  escape  the  pre- 
possessions of  his  education  and  environ- 
ment. 

So  with  the  opposition  of  some  unions  to 
the  enlistment  of  their  members  in  the  ranks 
of  the  militia.  With  this  opposition  the 
leaders  of  the  general  union  movement  are 
not  in  sympathy.  They  deprecate  it.  I 
quote  from  a  representative  statement :  "  The 
number  of  unions  discriminating  against 
militiamen  is  extremel}^  small,  but  it  would 
befar  better  if  there  were  none  at  all.  .  .  . 
The  trade  union  movement  in  this  country 
can  make  progress  only  by  identifying  itself 
with  the  State,  by  obeying  its  just  laws,  and 


The  Union  169 

by  upholding  the  military  as  well  as  the 
civil  arm  of  the  government."  Neverthe- 
less the  feeling  exists,  and  increases  with 
every  strike  in  which  militiamen  fire  on 
strikers.  The  men  perceive  that  at  any  mo- 
ment they  may  be  ordered  to  shoot  their 
own  brethren. 

Another  case  in  point  is  that  of  piece  work. 
The  objection  to  this  method  of  payment  is 
that  it  is  found  to  lend  itself  to  the  syste- 
matic quickening  of  the  pace  and  shortening 
of  the  rate.  The  men,  let  us  say,  are  mak- 
ing three  pieces  a  day,  for  which  they  get 
three  dollars.  It  is  proposed  to  them  to 
make  four  pieces  a  day,  for  which  they  are 
to  receive  four  dollars.  This  is  quite  satis- 
factory until  the  conditions  of  the  market 
make  it  desirable  to  cut  them  down  to  three 
dollars.  Then  they  make  four  pieces  for 
three  dollars.  Presently,  when  times  are 
more  prosperous,  a  pace  setter — that  is,  an 
uncommonly  fast  worker — is  put  in  who 
shows  them  that  they  can  actually  make 
five  pieces  a  day.     For  this  they  are  prom- 


lyo  The  Union 

ised  four  dollars.  Then,  when  the  tide  is 
again  at  ebb,  they  are  reduced  once  more  to 
the  original  three-dollar  rate,  for  which  they 
are  now  making  five  pieces,  to  the  profit  of 
the  employer,  but  to  the  detriment  of  their 
health. 

I  cite  these  various  cases,  in  which  at 
first  sight  the  union  seems  to  be  unreason- 
able, to  show  from  the  working  man's  point 
of  view  the  basis  of  his  opposition.  He  is 
convinced  by  experience  that  his  employer 
is  bound  to  get  as  much  as  he  can  and  to 
give  as  little  as  he  can,  and  he  defends  him- 
self It  is  a  game  of  fence.  The  master 
quickens  the  pace,  the  man  slows  up.  The 
master  limits  the  amount  of  output  that  he 
may  increase  the  price  of  his  goods,  the 
man  limits  the  number  of  apprentices  that 
he  may  maintain  the  price  of  his  labor. 
The  master  introduces  new  machinery  that 
he  may  cheapen  production  by  discharging 
men,  the  man  demands  an  increase  of  wages 
that  he  may  get  some  part  of  the  common 
advantage  of  the  improved  machine.     It  is 


The  Union  171 

an  inevitable  partnership,  for  neither  can 
dispense  with  the  other.  The  master  can- 
not possibly  do  business  without  the  man, 
nor  can  the  man  without  the  master.  But 
it  is  a  partnership  embittered  by  suspicion. 
In  its  contention  with  the  employer  the 
union  uses  two  stout  weapons  :  the  strike 
and  the  boycott.  Neither  of  these  was 
made  by  the  union  at  its  own  forge.  In 
some  essential  particulars  the  exodus  of  the 
people  of  Israel  out  of  Egypt  was  a  strike. 
It  was  an  industrial  revolution  of  the  work- 
ing men  of  a  great  nation.  They  stopped 
work  and  betook  themselves  out  of  the  land, 
to  the  consternation  of  capitalists.  A  simi- 
lar foreshadowing  of  modern  manners  is 
to  be  found  in  the  Book  of  Judges  in  the 
agreement  of  the  tribes  to  have  no  dealings 
with  the  sons  of  Benjamin.  They  boycot- 
ted the  Benjaminites.  That  is,  the  strike 
and  the  boycott  are  implements  of  warfare 
which  are  common  to  human  nature,  and 
are  as  ancient  as  hands  and  feet.  Our  at- 
tention  is  attracted   to  the  employment  of 


172  The  Union 

these  cudgels  by  the  union,  not  on  account 
of  their  novelty,  but  on  account  of  the  ef- 
fective way  in  which  they  are  wielded. 

When  the  two  parties  to  an  industrial 
agreement,  the  employer  and  the  employed, 
are  unable  to  agree,  each  has  open  to  him  a 
peremptory  argument.  If  the  aggrieved 
party  is  the  employer,  he  dismisses,  or  as  the 
phrase  is,  locks  out  the  men  ;  if  the  ag- 
grieved party  is  the  employed,  he  and  his 
companions  strike.  The  lockout  and  the 
strike  are  two  sides  of  the  same  act,  and 
each  rests  on  the  same  basis  of  reason.  The 
difficulty  comes  to  the  notice  of  the  public 
when  the  men  on  strike  are  not  content 
simply  to  stop  work  but  try  to  keep  other 
men  from  working  in  their  places.  And 
this  is  desperately  aggravated  when  the  ar- 
guments whereby  the  striker  would  dissuade 
his  non-union  brother  are  the  arguments  of 
violence. 

It  is  the  young  union,  as  I  said,  which 
rushes  merrily  into  a  strike.  To  the  more 
experienced  unionist,  and  especially  to  the 


The  Union  173 

officers  of  the  union,  the  strike  is  a  serious 
matter.  It  is  undertaken  with  the  most 
sincere  reluctance,  at  the  demand  of  what 
seems  a  social  necessity,  and  only  after  ar- 
bitration has  been  proposed  and  refused. 
The  policy  of  the  union  is  to  keep  the 
peace,  if  possible.  A  long  strike  means 
general  hardship.  It  takes  money  out  of 
the  workman's  pocket.  It  costs  the  em- 
ployer something,  but  never  so  much  as  it 
costs  the  striker.  His  wages  stop.  He  re- 
ceives, it  is  true,  a  pittance  from  the  funds 
of  the  union  ;  but  it  is  no  more  than  a 
meager  fraction  of  his  customary  earnings, 
and  it  may  come  from  the  provision  which 
he  and  his  companions  have  made  for  a 
time  of  sickness  and  old  age.  It  means 
immediate  and  severe  sacrifice.  It  means 
that  the  man  and  his  family  must  suffer. 
To  the  officials  of  a  union,  a  strike  brings  a 
multiplication  of  their  cares  and  labors, 
and  a  diminution  of  their  salaries.  The 
older  a  union  is,  and  the  stronger  it  is,  the 
more  reluctant  it  is  to  strike.     On  the  other 


174  ^^  Union 

hand,  the  refusal  of  the  employer  to  arbi- 
trate— that  is,  to  submit  the  matter  of  dif- 
ference to  just  judges — seems  to  the  work- 
ing man,  and  to  an  increasing  number  of 
disinterested  citizens,  a  needless  provoca- 
tion. It  is  the  result  in  part  of  a  belated 
sentiment  whereby  the  employer  regards 
his  men  as  his  servants.  Under  the  illusion 
of  this  sentiment,  the  action  of  the  protest- 
ing men  appears  a  piece  of  impudence. 
The  fact  that  they  presume  to  protest  is  an 
argument  against  them.  The  refusal  of  the 
employer  is  also,  in  part,  a  survival  of  an 
idea  of  the  nature  of  industrial  business 
which  is  no  longer  applicable.  The  fact  is 
that  all  large  business  under  modern  con- 
ditions is  an  actual  partnership  to  which 
there  are  three  parties  :  one  is  the  employer, 
another  is  the  employed,  the  third  is  the 
public.  The  employer  who  says  "  This  is 
my  business,"  misreads  the  compact  under 
which  in  the  nature  of  things  he  operates. 
Then  comes  the  strike.  At  the  beginning 
of  it,  two  of  the  partners,  the  union  and  the 


The  Union  175 

people,  are  commonly  united  against  the 
employer.  If  this  union  is  maintained,  the 
strike  succeeds.  If  it  is  broken,  if  the  pub- 
lic turns  against  the  union,  the  strike  is  lost. 
This  defeat  is  ordinarily  brought  about — 
unless  the  strike  is  manifestly  unfair — by 
one  or  both  of  two  strategic  blunders. 
The  first  is  the  extension  of  the  strike  so  as 
to  call  out  men  in  occupations  more  or  less 
allied  who  themselves  have  no  grievance. 
This  puts  the  strikers  in  the  wrong.  It 
brings  great  hardship  upon  persons  who  are 
in  no  way  concerned  in  the  original  con- 
tention, and  alienates  the  public.  It  is 
called  a  sympathetic  strike,  but  its  effect  is 
to  deprive  the  movement  of  the  sympathy 
of  the  people.  It  has  been  tried  a  good 
many  times,  and  has  almost  always  failed. 
The  second  blunder  is  the  use  of  force.  It 
is,  indeed,  to  be  remembered  that  the 
strikers  are  not  educated  men,  or  ac- 
customed to  polite  manners,  or  naturally 
self-restrained.  It  is  also  a  fact  that  the 
violence    which    attends    strikes    is    of    a 


ijtt  The  Union 

dramatic  sort  which  attracts  general  at- 
tention and  is  easily  exaggerated.  It  is  said, 
for  instance,  and  probably  with  truth,  that 
more  men  are  injured  on  the  Fourth  of 
July  than  are  hurt  in  all  the  strikes  of  all 
the  rest  of  the  year.  Moreover,  the  turbu- 
lence of  most  strikes  is  chiefly  the  work  of 
mischievous  and  criminal  persons  who  find 
here  an  occasion  of  license.  These  considera- 
tions, however,  do  not  release  the  union 
from  its  responsibility  ;  they  do  not  excuse 
the  man  who  flings  his  lighted  match  into 
this  heap  of  fireworks.  Nor  do  they  win 
the  strike.  When  the  violence  begins,  the 
failure  of  the  strike  is  imminent.  The  third 
partner,  the  public,  joins  the  first  partner, 
the  emplo3''er,  and  the  second  partner  loses. 
The  union  is  learning  this  lesson  of  ex- 
perience. "  The  employers,"  says  the  fore- 
most labor  leader  in  this  country,  "  are  per- 
fectly justified  in  condemning  as  harshly  as 
they  desire  the  acts  of  any  striker  or  strikers 
who  are  guilty  of  violence.  I  welcome,"  he 
says,  "■  the  most  sweeping  demonstration  of 


The  Union  177 

such  acts  and  the  widest  publicity  that  may 
be  given  to  them  by  the  press.  In  this  the 
employers  and  the  newspapers  are  simply 
supplementing  the  work  of  the  trade  union- 
ists themselves  who  are  endeavoring  to 
stamp  out  all  incentives  to  acts  of  violence." 
The  union  would  do  much  to  convince  the 
general  public  of  the  sincerity  of  these  prot- 
estations by  vigorously  disciplining  every 
union  man  who  is  guilty  of  such  acts.  If 
this  discipline  has  been  anywhere  enforced, 
the  instances  have  not  come  to  the  knowl- 
edge of  people  in  general. 

Amidst  the  many  perplexities  of  the  indus- 
trial situation,  one  thing  is  plain  ;  and  that 
is,  that  no  man  nor  association  of  men  may 
be  permitted  to  interfere  by  force  with  the 
liberty  of  any  man  to  hire  whom  he  will,  to 
work  for  whom  he  will,  or  to  agree  to  such 
pay  and  such  hours  as  please  himself.  No 
man  may  with  impunity,  on  any  pretext, 
break  the  public  peace.  The  offense  of  steal- 
ing another's  job  is  indeed  great,  as  Mr.  Car- 
negie has  well  said  ;    and   the  provocation 


178  The  Union 

touches  the  very  limit  of  endurance.  But  the 
way  out — the  only  way  out — is  the  persua- 
sion and  conversion  rather  than  the  persecu- 
tion of  the  non-union  man.  The  civil  power, 
and,  if  necessary,  the  military  power,  must 
be  summoned  to  protect  the  person  and  the 
property  of  the  citizen,  and  to  suppress 
disorder.  The  union  must  be  free  to  strike, 
but  for  its  own  good  as  well  as  for  the 
general  good,  it  must  build  its  plans  on  the 
foundation  of  law  and  of  reason. 

The  other  instrument  of  the  union  is  the 
boycott.  This  comes  to  reenforce  the 
strike.  As  the  strike  corresponds  to  the 
employer's  lockout,  so  the  boycott  corre- 
sponds to  the  employer's  black-list.  The 
employer  says  on  his  side,  "  Nobody  shall 
hire  this  objectionable  servant  whom  I  dis- 
miss." And  the  working  man  says,  "  No- 
body shall  do  business  with  this  objection- 
able master  whose  service  I  renounce." 
Everybody  boycotts  something.  The  tem- 
perance man  boycotts  the  saloon.  The 
patriots  of  Boston,  on  the  eve  of  the  Revo- 


The  Union  179 

lution,  in  the  midst  of  the  tea  troubles, 
issued  this  broadside  :  "  William  Jackson, 
an  Importer,  at  the  Brazen  Head,  North 
Side  of  the  Town  House  and  opposite  to 
the  Town  Pump,  in  Corn  Hill,  Boston.  It 
is  desired  that  the  Sons  and  Daughters  of 
Liberty  would  not  buy  any  one  thing  of 
him,  for  in  so  doing,  they  will  bring  Dis- 
grace on  Themselves,  and  their  Posterity, 
forever  and  ever.  Amen."  The  Con- 
sumers' League,  with  its  lists  of  fair  houses, 
and  its  label,  maintains  an  indirect  boy- 
cott, amidst  the  commendation  and  grati- 
tude of  all  good  people.  The  union  is  quite 
within  its  rights  when  it  withdraws  its 
trade  and  the  trade  of  its  friends  from  men 
who  seem  to  them  to  be  enemies  of  the 
working  man.  The  boycott,  like  the  strike, 
attracts  general  attention  by  the  vigorous 
manner  in  which  the  union  applies  it,  and 
by  the  hardships  which  are  thus  occasion- 
ally imposed  upon  the  unoffending  public. 
The  impolitic  enforcement  of  the  boycott 
has   probably    done   more   even    than    the 


i8o  The  Union 

strike  to  discredit  the  union  and  to  make 
people  distrust  and  detest  it.  "  To  boycott 
a  street  railway  which  overreaches  its  em- 
ployees and  pays  starvation  wages  is  one 
thing  ;  to  boycott  merchants  who  ride  in  the 
cars  of  the  company  is  another  thing ;  and 
to  boycott  people  who  patronize  the  stores 
of  the  merchants  who  ride  in  the  boycotted 
cars  is  still  another  and  a  very  different 
thing."  Therein  Mr.  Brooks,  from  whom  I 
quote  the  sentence,  speaks,  I  suppose,  the 
general  mind.  And  the  sober  leaders  of 
the  union  substantially  agree  with  him.  To 
leave  a  church  in  which  a  man  who  worked 
in  a  strike  is  saying  his  prayers,  to  carry  a 
teamster's  grievance  into  the  house  of 
mourning  and  insult  a  non-union  funeral, 
to  get  a  girl  dismissed  from  her  place  as  a 
teacher  in  tlie  public  schools  because  her 
father  did  not  obe}'  an  order  to  give  up  his 
job,  or  to  encourage  little  children  to  carry 
the  contentions  of  the  mill  or  of  the  mine 
into  the   playground, — such    brutalities  as 


The  Union  181 

these  are  discountenanced  by  labor  leaders  ; 
discountenanced,  but  not  punished. 

In  these  dramatic  wa^^s  the  union  invites 
general  disfavor — and  gets  it.  To  these  it 
adds  other  and  even  more  serious  offenses. 
Its  initial  proposition  that  the  working  men 
are  and  ought  to  be  a  distinct  social  class  is 
an  offense  against  our  common  democracy. 
For  this,  it  is  true,  the  union  is  not  alto- 
gether responsible.  The  fact  exists,  whether 
we  like  it  or  not.  But  it  is  neither  a  uni- 
versal nor  an  established  fact  as  yet.  The 
union  is  steadil}''  establishing  it,  against  the 
true  welfare  of  the  republic. 

The  interference  of  the  union  with  the 
transaction  of  business  is  an  offense.  Some- 
times it  is  a  minor  offense,  subjecting  the 
citizen  to  nothing  worse  than  discourtesy 
and  inconvenience.  It  is  probably  untrue 
that  the  agent  of  a  Roofer's  Union  called 
down  a  man  who  was  engaged  in  mending 
the  shingles  of  his  own  house,  but  the  story 
illustrates  a  procedure  whereby  the  union 
is  at  present  seriously  defeating  its  own  pur- 


i82  The  Union 

poses  by  converting  friends  into  enemies. 
Sometimes  the  offense  passes  the  limits  of 
petty  anno3^ance  and  becomes  an  obstacle 
in  the  way  of  honest  prosperity.  I  refer 
to  the  unions  which  keep  men  back  from 
doing  their  decent  best,  which  make  idle- 
ness a  precept,  and  restrict  the  output,  and 
resist  the  introduction  of  improved  ma- 
chinery, and  limit  unduly  the  number  of 
apprentices,  and  watch  for  opportunities  to 
take  advantage  of  an  employer's  necessities, 
and  aggravate  all  these  injuries  by  insolent 
dictation.  Sometimes  even  these  offenses 
are  exceeded  by  an  exercise  of  power  which 
for  a  moment  paralyzes  the  traffic  of  the 
whole  community,  stops  transportation, 
empties  the  market,  shuts  the  mines,  and 
puts  the  public  in  peril  of  cold  and  hunger. 
Concerning  this  situation  there  are  two 
things  to  be  said.  One  is  that  the  tyranny 
of  the  union  cannot  be  endured.  The 
American  citizen  will  not  submit  to  it. 
The  union  is  mighty,  but  the  popular  senti- 
ment is  mightier,  and  is  sure  to  assert  itself. 


The  Union  183 

The  union  is  intoxicated  with  new  power, 
and  is  exceeding  the  control  of  its  best  lead- 
ers. It  is  listening  to  the  man  who  has  the 
loudest  voice,  and  who  pounds  the  table 
with  the  heaviest  fist.  It  is  likely  in  this 
condition  to  conduct  itself  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  finally  to  arouse  the  patient  public. 
And  the  end  will  be  loss  instead  of  gain  for 
the  union.  This  country  is  largely  in- 
habited by  men  who  will  maintain  their  in- 
alienable right  to  work  for  whom  they  will 
on  terms  of  their  own  making,  to  hire  whom 
they  please  to  do  their  service,  and  to  carry 
on  any  lawful  business  so  long  as  they  con- 
duct it  in  a  lawful  way.  This  is  fundamen- 
tal. The  union  must  pursue  its  purposes 
by  persuasion,  not  by  persecution.  Here 
the  churchman  speaks  from  the  conclusions 
of  a  long  history.  The  church  has  tried 
these  union  methods,  even  to  the  laying  of 
a  whole  kingdom  under  an  interdict.  It 
understands  the  devotion,  the  enthusiasm 
and  sacrifice  which  underlie  even  the  worst 
of    the    working    man's   offenses.     But    it 


184  The  Union 

knows  by  bitter  experience  that  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  is  not  to  be  attained  by  that 
sort  of  violence.  This  is  as  certain  as  a  law 
of  nature.  It  is  a  fact  whose  foundations 
are  in  the  heart  of  humanity.  Not  even 
for  the  sake  of  a  righteous  cause  may  a  man 
yield  to  tyranny. 

The  other  thing  to  be  said  is  this  :  the 
union  cause  is  righteous.  The  union 
stands  for  the  progress  of  the  plain 
man.  Its  word  is  personality.  It  has  done 
much  and  will  do  more  to  make  the  multi- 
tude happier  and  better.  To  criticise  it  apart 
from  a  recognition  of  this  purpose  is  to  ag- 
gravate the  situation.  To  oppose  it  without 
discrimination  as  a  common  enemy  is  to 
emphasize  all  that  is  worst  in  it,  to  discredit 
its  wise  leaders,  and  eventually  to  force  it 
into  a  hostile  and  portentous  socialism. 
What  is  needed  is  criticism  of  the  union 
when  it  lapsjes  into  error  and  opposition 
when  it  is  in  the  wrong,  with  fair  coopera- 
tion, on  a  basis  of  sympathetic  understand- 
ing. 


IV 

THE  PEOPLE 

By  Rev.  Francis  G.  Peabody,  LL.  D. 


IV 

THE  PEOPLE 

The  story  of  the  modern  industrial  con- 
flict has  been  impressively  told  in  preceding 
lectures,  first,  in  the  language  of  the  em- 
ployers and  then  in  the  language  of  the  em- 
ployed. It  is  an  extraordinary  story  of  in- 
dustrial transformations  which  have  created 
a  new  economic  world.  Fifty  years  ago  the 
orthodox  economists  of  Great  Britain  found 
a  solution  of  the  labor  problem  in  what  they 
defined  as  "  the  free  competition  of  equal 
industrial  units."  There  is  now  scarcely 
such  a  thing  in  existence  as  free  competi- 
tion ;  and  the  industrial  units,  instead  of 
being  represented  by  individual  producers 
and  hand-workers,  have  expanded  into  vast 
aggregations  of  capital  and  vast  organiza- 
tions of  labor,  in  which  the  individual  is 
little  mcjre  thyn  one  cog  in  a  huge  machine. 


i88  The  People 

On  the  one  hand  has  proceeded  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  employer,  from  the  person  to  the 
corporation,  and  from  corporate  ownership 
to  the  massing  of  the  capital  in  an  entire  in- 
dustry in  the  combination,  the  trust,  the 
monopoly.  On  the  other  hand  has  pro- 
ceeded the  organization  of  the  employed, 
from  personal  loyalty  of  the  workman  to  his 
employer  to  the  union  within  the  trade, 
and  from  the  trade  union  to  the  federation 
of  unions ;  until  at  last  a  combination  of 
hand-workers  confronts  a  similar  combina- 
tion of  employers,  and  the  elementary  ad- 
justment of  hours  and  wages  between  equal 
industrial  units  is  supplanted  by  the  whole- 
sale methods  of  the  trade-agreement  and  the 
automatic  action  of  the  sliding-scale. 

It  is  a  story  which  describes  in  the  lan- 
guage of  industry  the  process  of  evolution 
and  concentration  which  has  occurred  in 
its  political  form  among  the  nations  of 
Europe.  From  primitive  feudal  groups 
with  their  intimate  relations  of  lord  and 
serf,  there  emerged  the  larger  principalities 


The  People  189 

with  princes  and  vassals ;  and  from  these 
in  their  turn  issued  the  greater  units  of 
monarchies  and  empires  ;  until  at  last  there 
are  evolved  the  great  European  Powers, 
with  their  consolidated  forces,  massed  along 
the  frontier  to  enforce  their  claims.  Each 
increase  in  the  army  of  the  Czar  is  met  by 
new  enlistments  in  the  army  of  the  Kaiser, 
until  the  most  approved  insurance  against 
war  is  discovered  in  the  very  magnitude  of 
preparations  for  war,  and  the  monarch  w^ho 
is  most  ready  for  battle  claims  the  promise 
of  the  peacemaker,  that  he  shall  inherit  the 
kingdom.  Much  the  same  scene  confronts 
one  as  he  surveys  the  world  of  modern  in- 
dustry. Two  vast  hostile  nations  seem  to 
occupy  the  land,  each  maintaining  itself 
on  a  war  footing,  each  claiming  belligerent 
rights,  each  enlarging  its  alliances  and 
strengthening  its  treasury,  each  insisting 
that  it  is  a  peacemaker  while  it  busily  ac- 
cumulates the  munitions  of  war,  each  speak- 
ing a  language  of  its  own  and  hardly  able 
to  understand  that  view  of  the  issue  which 


iQO  TTie  People 

within  the  other  camp  seems  the  most  ob- 
vious truth.  The  days  of  free  competition 
of  equal  industrial  units  are  vanished  like 
the  days  of  independence  of  some  minor 
German  State  ;  and  the  combinations  of 
capital  and  of  labor  are  the  war  measures 
of  modern  industry,  as  the  unification  of 
Germany  or  Italy  is  a  defense  against  for- 
eign foes.  One  of  the  most  important 
leaders  of  the  trade  union  movement  in 
America  has  said  with  entire  candor,  that 
the  schemes  for  mutual  insurance  and  be- 
nevolent aid  maintained  in  these  organiza- 
tions, and  often  regarded  as  their  chief 
justification,  do  not  in  any  degree  repre- 
sent their  primary  purposes.  They  are,  he 
said,  not  philanthropic  societies,  but  fight- 
ing machines.  Their  purpose  is  not  mutual 
benevolence,  but  war. 

If,  however,  the  field  of  modern  industry 
is  thus  a  battle-field,  where  great  powers  by 
every  means  of  organization,  strategy,  diplo- 
macy, and  arms  are  contending  for  control, 
there  forces  itself  upon    the  mind    of  the 


The  People  191 

looker-on  a  further  inquiry.  How  is  it,  one 
asks,  with  the  rest  of  us,  the  stay-at-homes, 
the  workaday  majority,  the  people  ?  What 
part  in  this  great  conflict  have  those  who 
are  not  immediately  enlisted  on  either 
side  ?  It  is  easy  to  report  what  the  captains 
of  industry  and  the  labor  leaders  have  to 
say  concerning  industrial  peace.  Give  us, 
says  each  of  them  in  turn,  complete  con- 
trol and  peace  will  be  secure.  It  is  the 
method  described  by  Tacitus:  "Solitu- 
dinem  faciunt,  pacem  appellant."  Yet 
these  contending  leaders,  though  each  rep- 
resents a  formidable  force,  have  behind  them 
armies  quite  insignificant  in  number  com- 
pared with  the  great  body  of  population, 
the  unorganized  public,  the  consumers  of 
every  station.  What  is  the  relation  to  the 
labor  struggle  of  this  peace-loving  and  unen- 
listed  mass,  the  doctors,  lawyers,  engineers 
and  ministers,  the  clerks  and  small  traders, 
the  women  and  children,  the  great  multitude 
of  farmers,  the  representatives  of  individ- 
ualized labor,  of  expert  labor,  and  of  labor 


192  The  People 

unorganized  even  in  organized  trades? 
Has  this  vast  majority  of  the  people  noth- 
ing to  say  or  to  do  about  the  industrial 
situation  ?  Are  they  mere  lookers-on  at  a 
conflict  in  which  they  have  no  personal 
concern  ? 

On  the  contrary,  the  slightest  reflection 
indicates  that  these  stay-at-home  citizens 
have  at  least  one  important  part  in  this 
game  of  war.  They  constitute  in  fact  the 
seat  of  war.  They  are  the  table  on  which 
the  game  of  war  is  played.  It  has  been 
said  of  Germany  that  each  productive  la- 
borer carries  a  soldier  on  his  back.  The 
same  burden  falls  on  the  quiet,  much-en- 
during people  in  a  time  of  industrial 
war.  A  lockout  raises  the  price  of  a  com- 
modity ;  a  strike  reduces  its  quantity  ;  and 
the  people  finally  pay  the  bill.  They  are, 
as  one  student  of  modern  society  has  very 
aptly  remarked,  the  forgotten  millions. 
Precisely  as  the  controversies  of  European 
States  appear  to  be  between  monarchs  and 
armies,  while  in  reality  it  is  the  tax-paying, 


The  People  193 

wheat-growing,  shop-keeping  millions  who 
maintain  these  royalties  and  support  these 
armies  ;  so  the  great,  long-suffering,  tax- 
paying  multitude  of  consumers  pays  in 
the  end  the  cost  of  industrial  warfare  in 
higher  prices,  derangement  of  business,  per- 
sonal inconvenience  and  domestic  distress. 
The  people  carry  both  the  employer  and 
the  employed  on  their  backs. 

A  striking  evidence  of  the  final  disposi- 
tion of  the  economic  burden  has  been  lately 
supplied  by  the  last  step  of  industrial  war- 
fare. When  the  nations  of  Europe  find 
themselves  on  the  edge  of  bloodshed,  a  new 
resource  presents  itself  in  the  form  of  inter- 
national alliances.  Two  nations,  naturally 
rivals,  conclude  that  more  may  be  gained 
by  mutual  understanding  than  by  war,  and 
proceed  to  substitute  combination  for  con- 
tention, through  dual  alliances,  reciprocity 
treaties,  or  tri-partite  agreements.  The  same 
substitution  of  a  trade  alliance  for  a  trade 
war  has  already  been  here  and  there  accom- 
plished by  the  hostile  forces  of  industry. 


194  The  People 

War  being  imminent,  as  between  the  Coal- 
Team  Drivers'  Association  of  Chicago  and 
the  Coal-Teamsters'  Union,  or  between  the 
Glass-Producers'  Association  and  the  Glass- 
Workers'  Union, — it  occurs  to  some  indus- 
trial statesman  that  the  purpose  of  both 
parties  may  be  better  served  by  combina- 
tion than  by  war.  Why  should  wages  be 
lost  in  the  struggle  to  raise  wages,  and  sales 
be  stopped  in  the  effort  to  raise  prices,  when 
both  wages  and  prices  might  be  raised  at 
the  cost  of  the  consumer?  Instead  of 
further  contention,  therefore,  a  coalition, 
or,  as  its  critics  call  it,  a  conspiracy,  is 
planned  ;  cartage  is  raised  in  price  forty  per 
cent,  for  the  sake  of  team  owners,  wages  are 
raised  from  ten  to  fifteen  per  cent,  for  the 
sake  of  the  teamsters  ;  and  the  people,  taken 
unawares  and  dependent  for  the  necessities 
of  life  on  prompt  distribution,  pay  the  cost 
of  both  advances.  This  is  the  last,  and  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  cleverest,  devices  of  mod- 
ern industrialism.  Some  persons  welcome 
it  as  a  solution  of  the  labor  problem.     It 


The  People  195 

has  come  to  be  described  as  the  "  Birming- 
ham idea,"  as  though  it  were  a  beneficent 
measure  of  practical  reform.  "  The  notion 
of  antagonism,"  it  is  said,  "  between  capital 
and  labor  is  apparently  giving  way  to  a 
very  different  division  of  industrial  life 
.  .  .  in  which  each  industry,  closely 
knit,  combining  both  employer  and  em- 
ployees, may  stand  solid  against  the  world." 
When,  however,  we  strip  this  device  of  its 
dignity  as  an  idea  or  a  solution,  what  does  it 
mean  ?  It  means  that  the  Trust  and  the 
Union  are  to  dictate  terms,  and  that  the 
people  are  helpless.  The  Chicago  coal  car- 
riers, or  the  Birmingham  bedstead-makers, 
may  set  their  own  prices,  distribute  the 
higher  percentage  of  profit  to  the  various 
parties  concerned,  and  the  people  have 
but  to  submit,  or,  as  the  case  may  be,  must 
burn  their  bedsteads  for  lack  of  coal,  or 
burn  coal  all  night  for  lack  of  bedsteads. 
Whether  it  be  war,  then,  between  capital 
and  labor,  or  peace,  the  issue  for  the 
people   seems  much  the  same.     Whatever 


196  The  People 

happens,  the  price  of  products  advances, 
and  the  innocent  third  party,  the  lookers-on, 
the  consumers,  the  people,  finally  pay  the 
bill,  whether  that  bill  be  created  by  passion- 
ate conflicts,  or  ingenious  strategy,  or  down- 
right conspiracy,  or  sheer  stupidity. 

It  becomes  therefore  interesting  to  inquire 
whether  the  only  part  in  the  problem  of 
industry  which  the  people  may  assume  is 
the  payment  of  the  bill  for  a  controversy 
not  their  own.  Are  there  but  two  parties 
to  the  labor  question?  Are  the  people  a 
mere  corpus  vile  for  industrial  vivisection 
and  experiment  ?  Are  they  the  mere  spoils 
of  two  contending  forces,  captured  in  turn 
by  each,  as  homes  along  a  European  frontier 
are  captured  by  the  raids  of  each  army  in 
turn?  I  remember  once  remarking  to  a 
German  officer  that  the  private  soldiers  of 
his  army  had  many  grievances  to  bear. 
The  private  soldiers,  he  answered,  are  not 
the  German  army  ;  the  officers  are  the  army, 
and  the  private  soldiers  are  the  weapons 
with   which   they   fight.     Must  it  be  said 


The  People  197 

with  the  same  cynicism  concerning  modern 
industry  that  the  organizations  of  capital 
and  labor  are  the  armies,  and  the  incomes 
and  needs  of  the  great  mass  of  consumers 
are  simply  the  weapons  with  which  they 
fight  ? 

The  answers  which  are  just  now  most 
frequently  given  to  these  questions  proceed 
from  two  opposite  and  extreme  views  of  the 
case.  On  the  one  hand  it  is  said  that  this 
sense  of  helplessness  is  justified,  that  the 
people  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  labor 
question,  that  they  are  simply  the  spoils  of 
the  conflict,  or  clinical  material  for  social 
operations.  On  the  other  hand,  with  more 
sanguine  confidence,  it  is  insisted  that  the 
people  are  masters  of  the  situation,  that  they 
have  but  to  assert  their  power,  take  control 
of  industry,  appropriate  the  machinery  of 
production,  and  the  labor  question  will  cease 
to  exist.  Each  of  these  views,  of  impotency 
and  of  supremacy,  demands  consideration. 

There  are  certainly  many  incidents  of 
modern    industry    which    fortify   the    first 


198  The  People 

view.  The  contending  forces  appear  as  a 
rule  to  be  quite  unaware  of  any  third  party 
with  whom  they  have  to  reckon.  The  in- 
dustrial war  goes  on  at  many  points  with 
as  little  consideration  of  the  rights  of  the 
people  as  two  armies  exhibit  for  the  farms 
and  crops  which  the}^  pass  on  their  march. 
Organized  capital  raises  rates  with  as  little 
apparent  regard  for  popular  opinion  as  a 
vivisector  has  for  the  pains  of  a  rabbit ; 
labor  organizations  not  infrequently  obstruct 
the  welfare  of  the  people  as  boldly  as  an  or- 
ganized gang  of  robbers  holds  up  a  railway 
train.  What  but  this  can  be  said  of  the 
proposal  to  unionize  the  business  of  the  na- 
tional government,  or  to  delay  the  prepara- 
tion for  the  St.  Louis  fair?  The  one  is  a 
government  of  the  people  and  by  the  people, 
yet  it  has  been  proposed  to  convert  it  into  a 
weapon  with  which  some  of  the  people  shall 
control  others  of  the  people.  The  other  is 
an  enterprise  to  which  the  honor  and  credit 
of  all  the  people  is  now  pledged,  j^et  it  is 
reported  that  none  but  union  labor  is  ad- 


The  People  199 

mitted  to  the  grounds,  and  that  even  union 
workmen,  coming  from  other  cities  to  sup- 
ply the  pressing  demand,  must  contribute 
to  the  funds  of  the  unions  of  St,  Louis. 
Both  of  these  proposals  assume  that  an  alert 
minority  can  surprise  and  disarm  a  careless 
majority,  as  a  whole  train  load  of  sleepy 
passengers  may  be  controlled  by  a  half  dozen 
determined  men. 

Startling  however  as  are  these  evidences  of 
temporary  power,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
that  the  people  are  permanently  helpless. 
Mr.  Lincoln's  homely  aphorism  is  as  true  of 
industry  as  it  was  of  politics,  ''  You  may 
fool  all  of  the  people  some  of  the  time  and 
some  of  the  people  all  of  the  time,  but  you 
cannot  fool  all  the  people  all  the  time."  The 
condition  of  public  affairs  reflects  in  the 
end  the  sentiment  of  the  people.  Popular 
opinion  is  the  final  arbiter  of  popular  move- 
ments. When  a  European  war  is  declared, 
it  appears  to  happen  through  the  decrees  of 
kings  and  cabinet  ministers,  but  in  fact 
these  agents  of  the  people  are  quite  aware 


200  The  People 

that  behind  them  there  must  stand  the 
force  of  popular  enthusiasm  or  passion  to 
fortify  their  cause.  It  is  the  same  with  the 
war  of  industry.  Back  of  the  two  armies 
directly  engaged  stands  always  the  source  of 
supply,  in  public  sympathy,  and  the  final 
judge,  in  public  opinion  ;  and  defiance  of 
the  general  welfare  either  by  capital  or  by 
labor,  while  it  may  have  temporary  success 
is  but  courting  final  defeat. 

In  the  industrial  struggle  moreover,  one 
means  of  self-defense  is  in  the  hands  of  the 
people  which  a  nation  hesitates  to  use 
when  it  is  suddenly  called  to  war.  It  is  the 
weapon  of  complete  abstinence.  Let  capital 
become  too  grasping,  or  labor  too  aggressive 
and  the  people,  except  in  the  case  of  the  bare 
necessities  of  life,  may  simply  refuse  to  buy 
or  to  consume.  A  corporation  may  an- 
nounce the  most  roseate  conditions  of  trade 
and  allure  employees  by  tempting  schemes 
of  profit-sharing,  but  let  public  confidence 
once  slacken  and  the  securities  decline  in 
the  face  of  reported  earnings,  and  the  corpo- 


The  People  201 

ration  instead  of  dictating  terms  to  the  pub- 
lic must  await  the  restoration  of  public 
faith.  This  same  passive  defense  may  be 
illustrated  in  the  smallest  operations.  A 
householder  proposes  to  make  a  contract  for 
painting  his  house.  The  Painters'  Union 
however  has  raised  wages  and  restricted 
hours  so  that  the  bids  for  the  job  are  all  ex- 
travagant. What  is  the  defense  of  the  house- 
holder ?  He  simply  declines  to  contract. 
He  strikes  against  both  parties.  He  can  wait. 
His  house  may  remain  unpainted.  In  short, 
the  people  in  such  a  situation  unconsciously 
organize  what  is  called  in  English  politics  a 
''  Passive  Resistance  League,"  the  association 
of  those  who  resolve  to  do  nothing,  and  it  is 
as  though  two  armies  advancing  to  battle 
found  themselves  without  a  base  of  supplies, 
and  must  stop  fighting,  not  because  they  are 
at  peace,  but  simply  because  they  are  hungry. 
The  consumer,  though  he  seems  to 
carry  the  producer  on  his  back,  as  we 
have  before  remarked,  may,  if  he  so 
please,   stop    short   and    throw    his   e(iues- 


202  The  People 

trian  master  over  his  head.  That  is  pre- 
cisely what  is  happening  just  now  in  the 
building  trades.  Wages  and  material  are 
costly  ;  the  people  seem  successfully  taxed  on 
both  sides  ;  but,  of  a  sudden,  building  stops, 
and  through  the  whole  long  series  of  persons 
who  live  by  building,  from  the  architect 
down  to  the  mortar  mixer,  runs  a  conscious- 
ness that  their  livelihood  is  finally  depend- 
ent on  the  great  silent  majority  whose 
strength  is  to  sit  still.  There  is  a  saying 
among  charity  workers  that  a  town  may 
have  as  many  poor  people  as  it  can  afford 
to  pay  for.  This  same  saying  may  be  ap- 
plied to  the  conflicts  of  modern  industry. 
A  community  may  have  as  many  strikes 
and  lockouts  as  it  can  afford  to  pay  for  ;  but 
when  the  people  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously conclude  that  they  cannot  indulge 
themselves  further  in  these  luxuries,  then 
a  new  form  of  strike  begins,  silent,  un- 
ostentatious, yet  effective ;  and  more  im- 
pressive than  the  rising  tide  of  labor 
struggles  and  the  noise  of  many  agitators. 


The  People  203 

is   this  quiet  ebbing  away  of  the  people's 
support. 

When,  however,  one  thus  recalls  the  latent 
capacity  of  the  people,  he  is  easily  led  to  an 
opposite  and  equally  extreme  view  of  the 
industrial  situation.  Instead  of  a  confession 
of  impotency  he  may  turn  to  a  conviction 
of  supremacy ;  instead  of  the  admission 
that  the  people  have  no  part  in  the  labor 
problem  he  may  conceive  that  they  should 
take  over  its  administration  to  themselves 
and  bring  the  conflict  to  an  end.  If,  it  is 
urged,  the  issue  of  the  present  competitive 
system  is  nothing  better  than  organized  war, 
if  these  consolidated  armies  of  capital  and 
labor  show  no  evidence  of  mutual  under- 
standing and  disarmament,  why  should  not 
the  people  take  possession  of  the  machinery 
of  business,  and  as  they  have  learned  to 
govern  for  themselves,  now  learn  to  produce 
and  distribute  for  themselves?  Does  not 
the  degeneration  both  of  capitalism  and  of 
unionism  prophesy  the  triumph  of  Socialism? 
What  indeed  are  these  vast  aggregations  of 


204  The  People 

capital  and  of  labor  but  social  experiments, 
which  by  a  single  farther  step  bring  us  to 
the  Socialist  Commonwealth?  If  for  ex- 
ample, the  trunk  railway  lines  of  the 
country  are  already  controlled  by  a  half- 
dozen  men  through  community  of  interest, 
or  if  the  rate  of  wages  is  already  determined 
in  great  sections  of  industry  by  the  author- 
ity of  a  few  leaders,  does  not,  it  is  asked, 
this  situation  both  demonstrate  the  possi- 
bility and  present  the  opportunity  of  col- 
lective control  ?  Shall  not  the  railroads  be 
nationalized,  and  the  labor  supply  union- 
ized, and  the  rights  of  people  secured,  not 
by  protest  but  by  ownership  ? 

It  must  be  admitted  that  many  signs  of 
the  present  situation  reasonably  encourage 
this  faith  of  the  socialist.  Whatever  may 
have  been,  for  instance,  the  temporary  con- 
sequences of  the  anthracite  coal  strike,  in 
inconvenience  or  loss,  the  most  serious  con- 
sequence was  beyond  doubt  the  conversion 
of  great  numbers  of  citizens  to  the  belief 
that  the  best  issue  from  this  conflict  was  the 


The  People  205 

control  of  such  monopolies  by  the  people 
themselves,  and  that  a  programme  of  social- 
ism was  not  beyond  the  sphere  of  practical 
politics.  It  is  an  eas}''  process  of  logic 
which  leads  one  to  argue  that  if  under  the 
present  system  of  industry  the  people  may 
freeze  or  starve,  it  is  better  to  take  the 
chances  of  a  plan  which  at  least  holds  out 
the  promise  that  the  people  shall  be 
warmed  and  fed. 

Further  reflection,  however,  on  these 
signs  of  the  times,  instead  of  justifying  this 
programme  of  collective  control,  leads  to 
quite  an  opposite  conclusion.  Two  years 
ago,  in  the  rush  of  business  inflation,  when 
no  enterprise  seemed  too  vast  or  too  shad- 
owy for  successful  promoting,  it  was  easy  to 
dream  of  a  universal  trust  in  whose  econo- 
mies and  profits  all  the  people  might  share. 
The  reverses  of  the  last  year,  however,  have 
roughly  wakened  many  people  from  this 
pleasant  dream.  We  have  learned  the  ex- 
treme difficulty  of  perpetuating  these  colos- 
sal enterprises  even  when  selected  adminis- 


2o6  The  People 

trators  are  paid  prodigious  salaries,  and 
when  industrial  monopoly  is  practically  as- 
sured. The  people,  instead  of  expecting 
social  salvation  through  this  combination 
of  forces,  have  become  thoroughly  alarmed 
at  the  possible  disasters  which  threaten 
these  schemes.  To  this  nervous  reaction 
induced  by  costly  experience  must  be  added 
a  further  aspect  of  the  case  which  repels 
many  minds  from  the  movement  towards 
socialism.  It  is  the  tendency,  perceptible 
in  both  parties  concerned,  to  transfer  their 
warfare  from  the  field  of  industry  to  the 
field  of  politics.  The  vaster  the  interests 
on  both  sides  become,  the  more  tempting 
becomes  the  chance  of  winning  the  victory, 
not  by  economic  advantage,  but  by  the  con- 
trol of  legislatures  and  courts.  The  labor 
vote  and  its  influence  on  lawmakers  are 
portentous  enough,  but  the  influence  of 
corporations  both  on  elections  and  on  legis- 
lation is  not  less  grave  though  much  less 
noisy.  The  American  Federation  of  Labor 
has  indeed  by  an  overwhelming  vote  repu- 


The  People  207 

diated  direct  attempts  to  convert  their  organ- 
ization to  political  socialism  ;  and  the  cor- 
porations insist,  on  their  part,  that  their 
entrance  into  politics  is  not  to  procure  fa- 
vorable legislation,  but  to  expose  and  thwart 
blackmail  legislation.  Yet  it  is  evident 
that  both  forces  of  industry  stand  on  the 
edge  of  direct  political  activity,  and  are 
gravely  tempted  to  use  their  industrial 
power  for  an  invasion  of  popular  liberty. 

What  shall  be  said  then  of  a  social  pro- 
gramme which  deliberately  transforms  pro- 
ductive industry  into  practical  politics,  and 
proposes  to  administer  business  as  a  part  of 
the  national  or  municipal  government  ? 
Are  the  conditions  of  our  politics  such  as  to 
encourage  this  venture?  Would  the  coal 
industry  or  the  railways  be  better  adminis- 
tered as  spoils  of  the  party  in  power?  Do 
the  corporations  or  the  trades  unions  de- 
velop better  leaders  and  cleaner  methods 
when  they  turn  from  industrial  service  to 
political  wire-pulling?  Does  not  the  very 
hope  of  popular  government  depend  on  its 


2o8  The  People 

detachment  from  special  interests,  and  its 
representation  of  the  entire  people  in  their 
human  rights  and  duties  ? 

Reflections  like  these  deter  thoughtful 
citizens  from  any  wholesale  venture  of  the 
people  into  the  sphere  of  industry.  The 
socialist  programme,  except  in  occasional  ex- 
periments, is,  in  the  light  of  present  tenden- 
cies in  this  country  rather  a  warning  than 
a  destiny.  The  people,  as  Mr.  Spencer  once 
remarked,  are  not  ready  to  give  to  the  un- 
faithful stewards  of  our  present  public  life 
the  further  care  of  our  business  affairs. 
The  strength  of  the  people  lies  in  their  de- 
tachment from  the  details  of  business,  and 
their  judicial  attitude  towards  its  principles 
and  methods.  The  force  of  public  senti- 
ment is  strongest  when  it  stands  apart  from 
the  warfare  of  commercialism,  and  esti- 
mates, stimulates,  or  arrests  its  progress  by 
wholesale  judgments  of  justice,  compassion, 
and  peace.  The  people  are  neither  the 
helpless  spoils  of  industry,  nor  are  they  on 
the  other  hand   the   best   directors   of  in- 


The  People  209 

dustry.  It  is  their  place  to  control  the 
final  issue  as  a  great  people  finally  deter- 
mines the  issue  of  a  great  war — by  the 
direction  of  the  nation's  sympathy,  and  the 
education  of  the  nation's  conscience,  with- 
out whose  support  no  modern  monarch  can 
long  sit  on  his  throne  and  no  modern  army 
can  win  a  prolonged  campaign. 

If  then  the  place  of  the  people  in  the  in- 
dustrial programme  is  that  of  the  dispas- 
sionate observer  who  is  at  the  same  time  the 
final  judge,  we  may  go  on  to  ask  what  are 
the  means  by  which  this  attitude  may  be 
maintained  and  this  authority  exercised. 
There  are,  it  may  be  answered,  three  ways 
in  which  the  power  of  the  people  may  be 
made  effective,  and  in  the  end  decisive,  in 
the  issues  of  industry.  The  first  is  the  way 
of  education  ;  the  second  is  the  way  of  leg- 
islation ;  the  third  is  the  way  of  spirituali- 
zation.  As  they  advance  along  these  three 
ways,  the  people  come  to  their  own. 

The  first  step  of  the  people  towards  in- 
dustrial authority  will  be  taken  when  they 


210  The  People 

become  aware  of  the  new  conditions  of  the 
modern  economic  world.  There  has  oc- 
curred within  a  single  generation  a  trans- 
formation in  business  methods  which  is  not 
only  unprecedented  in  its  character,  but 
which  has  been  accomplished  with  such  ab- 
ruptness as  to  leave  many  persons  either 
unaware  that  the  old  order  is  extinct,  or 
dreaming  that  the  new  order  may  be 
abandoned.  I  asked  a  friend  in  Chicago  not 
long  ago  whether  his  father  was  still  in 
business  with  him,  and  he  answered  that 
this  man  of  the  earlier  order  had  found 
himself  incapable  of  adjustment  to  the  new 
methods,  and  had  withdrawn  from  a  world 
which  he  could  not  understand.  Just  as 
the  first  Atlantic  cable  revolutionized  in  a 
day  the  whole  system  of  foreign  trade,  so 
the  principle  of  combination  has  abruptly 
modified  the  competitive  system  of  industry 
and  has  introduced  new  grouping,  new 
sources  of  profit  and  economy,  and  an  un- 
dreamt-of range  of  administrative  power. 
The  first  organized  recognition  of  the  new 


The  People  211 

industrial  opportunity  disclosed  itself,  not, 
as  might  have  been  anticipated,  among  the 
employers,  with  their  larger  range  of  ob- 
servation, but  among  the  wage-earners  with 
their  keener  sense  of  need.  Nothing  in- 
deed is  more  striking  in  industrial  history 
than  the  contrast  which  has  existed  between 
the  prevailing  indifference  and  inertia  of 
the  great  mass  of  employers,  and  the  eager 
efforts  for  economic  education  which  have 
been  made  by  hand-workers.  Limited  as 
their  education  has  necessarily  been,  and 
often  directed  to  no  other  end  than  the  pro- 
curing of  ammunition  for  industrial  war, 
it  is  none  the  less  significant  that  the  work- 
ing people  in  all  countries  have  been  the 
most  diligent  students  of  economic  proc- 
esses and  laws,  and  that  while  many  an 
employer  was  blundering  along  in  the  old 
way,  the  hot  debates  of  the  trades  unions 
and  the  large  responsibilities  of  the  coop- 
erative system  in  Great  Britain,  were  edu- 
cating plain  people  for  a  new  economic 
world.     The  education  of  the  employers  as 


212  The  People 

a  whole  did  not  become  far  advanced  until 
they  were  forced  to  learn  their  lessons  from 
a  few  masters  of  their  own  craft.  Here  and 
there — as  in  the  extraordinary  instance  of 
the  Standard  Oil  Company — a  few  acute 
observers  of  the  situation  perceived  the  new 
power  of  combination,  and  proceeded  to 
create  the  hydra-headed  and  omnivorous 
organizations  of  the  new  time.  Then  at 
last  the  employers  awoke  and  the  era  of 
promoting,  inflating,  and  reorganizing  be- 
gan. It  was  as  though  thirsty  men  woke  to 
find  themselves  at  a  well  stocked  table  and 
began  a  very  orgy  of  excess.  Nor  have  the 
hand-workers  been  restrained  from  a  similar 
intoxication.  Monopoly  of  labor  has  come 
to  be  regarded  as  the  deliverer  from  mo- 
nopoly of  capital.  Unionizing  appears  to  be 
the  remedy  for  patronizing.  Why  should 
not  every  vocation  and  profession  in  the 
world,  asks  one  enthusiastic  labor-leader, 
be  unionized,  and  the  principle  of  mo- 
nopoly made  universally  imperative  ? 

What   is    it,  however,  one  asks  himself. 


The  People  213 

which  has  given  this  extraordinary  advan- 
tage to  the  principle  of  monopoly  ?  It  is  at 
bottom  the  ignorance,  insensibility,  and 
apathy  of  the  people.  The  people  are  not, 
as  a  whole,  even  now  aware  that  this  revo- 
lutionary change  has  taken  place.  They  do 
not  know  that  the  labor  movement  now  in- 
volves not  only  uncertainties  of  wages  and 
hours,  but  a  completely  new  stratification  of 
society,  that  it  is,  at  bottom,  a  class-move- 
ment, proposing  to  array  the  whole  of  mod- 
ern society  into  two  hostile  camps.  The  peo- 
ple have  even  not  become  thoroughly  aware 
that,  in  many  forms  of  business,  they  are  at 
this  moment  absolutely  without  defense 
from  the  power  of  a  monopoly  which  unites 
contractor  and  workman,  and  is  in  a  position 
to  dictate  whether  work  shall  be  done  or 
not  done  even  in  one's  most  personal  affairs. 
The  people  have  been  simply  taken  by  sur- 
prise, and  captured  by  one  after  another  of 
these  devices  of  combination,  and  must  pay 
their  ransom.  They  have  not  reckoned 
with     the    world    as    it    is.      They     have 


214  The  People 

fancied  that  producers  and  workers  were 
the  servants  of  the  people,  and  of  a  sud- 
den have  discovered  them  to  be  the  mas- 
ters of  the  people.  The  people  are  with- 
out coal  or  cotton  or  oil  or  some  other  com- 
modity, and  this  improvidence  becomes  the 
opportunity  for  the  monopolist  whether  he 
monopolizes  material,  or  tools,  or  labor. 

How  then  are  the  people  to  protect  them- 
selves ?  First  of  all  by  the  way  of  educa- 
tion. The  defenselessness  of  the  people  is 
in  their  ignorance ;  and  ignorance,  as  Dr. 
Curry  once  said  of  education  at  the  South, 
is  not  a  remedy  for  anything.  The  educa- 
tion of  the  people  in  the  industrial  question 
is  often  acquired  through  slow  and  severe 
experience.  They  are  often  caught  nap- 
ping, but  they  are  not  likely  to  be  caught 
napping  twice  at  the  same  point.  Few 
householders  whose  bins  were  empty  in 
1902  are  without  a  winter's  stock  of  anthra- 
cite coal  in  1903.  Experience,  however,  is 
a  costly  and  embittering  form  of  education, 
and  a  more  sj'^stematic  scheme  of  popular 


The  People  215 

training  is  necessary  to  give  to  the  people 
that  same  knowledge  of  economic  laws  which 
both  employers  and  employed  have  now 
learned  to  apply  for  their  own  advantage. 
Here  is  the  new  province  of  the  school,  the 
college,  and  the  university.  A  considerable 
part  of  the  education  of  the  people,  as  it  has 
been  arranged  by  earlier  generations,  has  but 
slight  relation  to  the  world  as  it  now  is. 
New  tracts  of  knowledge  must  be  opened  to 
the  public  mind.  Instruction  in  the  laws 
of  economic  welfare,  in  the  principles  of 
democracy,  in  the  obligations  of  civic 
righteousness,  are  an  essential  part  of  the 
new  education — the  education  of  the  citizen, 
the  consumer,  the  people.  No  change  in 
modern  education  is  so  hopeful  as  the  in- 
creased provision  for  such  studies.  The  era 
of  social  panaceas,  of  Utopian  States,  of 
short  cuts  to  prosperity,  seems  almost  at  an 
end,  and  the  era  of  sober  and  patient  educa- 
tion seems  to  be  near.  It  has  become  plain 
to  great  numbers  of  students  in  all  condi- 
tions  of  life  that  the  industrial  problem  is 


2i6  The  People 

not  to  be  settled  in  a  day  or  in  a  generation, 
and  that  the  remark  of  one  of  the  best  in- 
formed observers  of  the  matter  was  justi- 
fied— ''  When  I  hear  a  man  bring  forward 
a  solution  of  the  labor  question  I  move  to 
adjourn."  The  solution  of  the  labor  ques- 
tion, if  it  is  to  be  reached,  must  be  reached 
not  through  the  hastily  devised  remedies 
either  of  near-sighted  employers  or  of  hand- 
to-mouth  wage-earners,  but  through  the  pa- 
tient education  of  the  people,  the  increase 
of  popular  understanding  of  economic 
affairs,  the  training  of  the  people  in  indus- 
trial usefulness,  the  development  of  the 
people's  conscience  and  the  quickening  of 
the  people's  heart. 

The  second  safeguard  of  the  people 
is  an  immediate  consequence  of  their 
education.  It  is  the  application  of  better 
knowledge  to  better  legislation.  The  labor 
laws  of  the  last  fifty  years,  both  in  Great 
Britain  and  in  this  country,  have  done 
much  to  correct  the  abuses  and  ameliorate 
the    condition    of    wage-earners ;    but   the 


TTie  People  217 

great  majority  of  such  laws  have  dealt  with 
abuses  which  were  easy  to  trace,  and  with 
conditions  which  all  observers  could  under- 
stand. They  have  concerned  themselves 
with  the  special  cases  of  women's  labor  and 
child-labor,  with  limited  questions  of  safety, 
health,  and  inspection,  with  definite  issues 
of  hours  and  payments.  With  the  new  ex- 
pansion of  industry,  however,  a  new  series 
of  legislative  problems  confront  us  which 
are  far  more  difficult  to  grasp,  and  which 
call  for  quite  an  unprecedented  degree  of 
sanity,  patience,  and  wisdom.  How  to  con- 
trol monopolies  without  checking  private 
initiative ;  how  to  regulate  rates  without 
obstructing  enterprise  ;  how  to  ensure  Fed- 
eral control  without  involving  Federal  own- 
ership ;  how  to  guarantee  the  right  of  wage- 
earners  to  unite,  without  destroying  the 
right  of  other  wage-earners  not  to  unite ; 
how  to  defend  the  right  of  injunction  with- 
out permitting  injunction  to  fortify  wrong  ; 
how  to  guard  tlie  integrity  of  the  legishi- 
ture  which  makes  the  laws,  and  the  purity 


2i8  The  People 

of  the  judiciary  which  enforces  the  laws  — 
these  and  many  other  questions  concerning 
the  law  of  labor  are  either  absolutely  cre- 
ated by  new  conditions,  or  have  assumed 
under  new  conditions  a  wholly  new  degree 
of  significance.  Questions  so  comprehen- 
sive and  so  portentous  as  these  are  not  to 
be  answered  by  impulsive,  excited,  or  ig- 
norant legislation,  but  must  be  dealt  with 
by  new  forms  of  law  wrought  out  by  the 
intelligent  discussion  and  reflection  of  an 
educated  public. 

In  this  new  extension  of  the  possibilities 
of  legislation  there  are  but  two  alternative 
waj^s  of  procedure  :  one  is  the  way  of  pub- 
lic ownership,  the  other  is  the  wa}^  of  pub- 
lic supervision.  We  have  for  the  present 
boldly  struck  into  the  second  path,  by  the 
establishment  of  Boards  of  scrutiny,  such  as 
railway  commissions,  gas  commissions,  fac- 
tory inspectors,  Boards  of  health,  inter-State 
commerce  commissions,  bank  examiners, 
having  access  to  accounts  and  representing 
the  interest  of  the  public  welfare.     It  is  often 


The  People  219 

urged  that  this  whole  tendency  towards 
scrutiny  is  an  invasion  of  private  rights  and 
a  hindrance  to  private  enterprise.  What 
should  be  more  carefully  observed,  however, 
is  the  fact  that  these  methods  of  scrutiny 
are,  under  the  new  circumstances,  the  only 
practical  alternative  for  the  still  bolder  ex- 
periment of  public  ownership.  To  return 
to  the  earlier  world  of  individual  liberty 
and  privacy  is  now  quite  impossible.  Either 
the  corporations  and  federations  whose  in- 
terests affect  the  whole  population  must 
submit  themselves  to  the  scrutiny  of  the 
representatives  of  the  people,  or  else  the 
people  will  be  over-tempted  by  the  illusory 
doctrines  of  collective  control.  Either  the 
organizations  of  labor  on  the  other  hand 
must  welcome  a  legal  status  and  a  legal 
responsibility,  or  else  they  will  find  them- 
selves involved  in  the  much  more  dubious 
venture  of  a  Socialist  Commonwealth.  The 
strength  of  the  socialist  programme  in  all 
countries  to-day  lies  in  this  conviction  that 
quasi-public  interests  are  insufiiciently  con- 


220  The  People 

trolled,  and  the  true  conservative  in  political 
economy  to-da}^  is  not  he  who  still  sighs 
for  an  impossible  world  of  economic  free- 
dom, but  he  who  applies  himself  to  secure 
publicity,  integrity,  and  legal  responsibility 
in  the  vast  economic  organizations  of  the 
modern  State. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  neither 
in  the  education  of  the  people,  nor  in  legis- 
lation for  their  sakes,  lies  the  secret  of  the 
people's  power.  In  all  that  has  been  thus 
far  said,  indeed,  much  too  rigid  a  line  has 
been  drawn  between  the  people  and  the  in- 
dustrial forces  of  employers  and  employed. 
The  people  have  been  described  as  though 
they  were  lookers-on  at  a  struggle  in  which 
they  have  no  personal  share.  The  fact  is, 
on  the  contrary,  that  no  such  detachment  of 
the  people  from  industrial  life  is  possible. 
In  one  way  or  another,  as  employers  of 
labor  or  as  laborers,  as  stockholders  or  as 
consumers,  every  citizen  is  inextricably  in- 
volved in  the  industrial  struggle,  and  it  is 
quite  in  vain  for  any  one  to  assume  an  atti- 


The  People  221 

tude  of  irresponsibility,  or  neutrality,  or  in- 
difference. What  we  call  the  labor  ques- 
tion is  in  fact  one  aspect  of  the  general 
movement  of  modern  society,  and  one  ex- 
pression of  the  prevailing  traits  of  national 
character.  A  distinguished  European  ob- 
server of  modern  life  once  said  that  revolu- 
tionary socialism  was  the  penalty  which 
Europe  was  paying  for  not  being  Christian. 
The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  labor 
agitation.  It  is  the  penalty  we  are  pay- 
ing for  not  being  Christian.  The  sins  of 
the  industrial  order  are  at  bottom  the  sins 
of  the  people;  the  evils  of  commercialism 
illustrate  the  character  of  the  people.  Each 
economic  abuse  which  is  tolerated  or  winked 
at  is  a  witness  that  the  heart  of  the  people 
is  not  right.  The  stream  of  industrialism 
cannot  rise  higher  than  its  source,  and  that 
source  is  to  be  found  in  the  ruling  passion 
of  the  people's  heart,  and  the  dominant  di- 
rection of  the  people's  will. 

Here   is  the  most  solemn   aspect  of  the 
present   industrial    situation.     It   is   not  a 


222  The  People 

case  where  certain  commercial  persons  are 
contending  for  supremacy  while  the  inno- 
cent people  look  on  or  suffer.  The  successes 
of  the  financiers  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
excesses  of  the  labor-leaders  on  the  other, 
are  made  possible  through  the  presupposi- 
tion that  the  people  are  at  heart  of  the 
same  mind  as  they.  The  people  are  so 
eager  to  get  rich  that  they  become  the  easy 
prey  of  speculative  finance  ;  the  people  are 
so  indifferent  to  the  enforcement  of  the  law 
that  they  easily  tolerate  illegal  violence. 
The  agitators  of  Chicago  rely  on  the  tacit 
sympathy  of  the  people ;  the  lynchings  at 
the  South  occur  not  in  defiance  of  popular 
opinion  but  through  the  connivance  of  pop- 
ular opinion.  In  short,  a  nation,  like  a 
person,  reaps  what  it  sows.  It  sows  the 
spirit  of  commercialism  and  it  reaps  the 
spirit  of  industrial  agitation  ;  it  sows  os- 
tentation and  self-indulgence  in  the  homes 
of  the  rich,  and  it  reaps  the  break-up  of 
those  homes  through  degeneration  and  di- 
vorce ;  it  sows  the  seeds  of  a  World-Power 


The  People  223 

and  it  reaps  the  perils  of  a  World-Power  ; 
it  sows  the  lust  for  gain  and  monopoly,  and 
it  reaps  inflation,  indigestible  securities, 
commercial  crises,  lawlessness,  and  social 
war. 

What  then  is  to  be  the  refuge  of  the 
people  from  the  perils  of  commercialism? 
There  is  but  one  final  security — it  is  the 
spiritualization  of  American  life,  the  re- 
demption of  the  people  from  the  overmaster- 
ing passion  for  getting  gain,  the  discovery  of 
greater  danger  for  a  nation  than  what  Car- 
lyle  called  "  the  Hell  of  not  making  money." 
It  is  not  alone  the  outside  of  American 
life — its  machinery,  its  laws,  its  industrial 
combinations — which  most  need  cleansing  ; 
it  is,  far  more,  its  interior  condition,  its 
character,  its  prevailing  ideals.  The  social 
problem  may  be  in  its  form  economic,  legis- 
lative, and  educational,  but  in  its  essence  it 
is  ethical,  spiritual,  religious,  a  call  to  moral 
redemption,  a  summons  to  a  better  life. 

What  is  all  this  but  a  challenge  of  the 
modern  world  to  the  Christian  Church — a 


224  ^^  People 

challenge  which  should  give  to  any  loyal 
Christian  new  courage  and  hope.  Through 
many  a  weary  generation  the  Church  has 
lived  apart  from  the  world,  concerned  with 
the  things  of  the  spirit,  rent  by  metaphysical 
controversies  concerning  the  nature  of  the 
Godhead  or  the  conditions  of  another  life. 
Now,  with  a  certain  surprise  it  finds  itself 
summoned  to  the  redemption  of  this  present 
world  and  the  interpretation  of  the  modern 
age.  What  is  the  great  overshadowing  peril 
which  now  threatens  American  life  ?  It  is 
not  the  peril  of  corporations,  or  unions,  or 
economic  controversies,  however  sharp  and 
costly  these  may  be.  It  is  the  peril  of  a  com- 
mercialized, and  materialized  civilization,  in 
which  the  ideals  that  support  Democracy 
may  fail  of  vitality  and  strength.  What 
we  have  to  fear  is  that  the  gain  of  commer- 
cialism may  be  the  loss  of  idealism.  Over 
the  gatcAvay  that  leads  to  political  expansion 
and  economic  wealth  is  written  the  ancient 
warning,  "  What  shall  it  profit  a  nation  to 
gain    the    whole    world    and    lose    its   own 


The  People  225 

soul  ?  "  Here  is  the  summons  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church — to  abandon  its  ancient  contro- 
versies and  divisive  counsels,  and  gird  itself 
for  a  new  crusade  against  the  practical  ma- 
terialism of  modern  life.  The  two  forces 
which  finall}^  contend  for  the  mastery  are 
not  capital  and  labor,  with  the  people  look- 
ing on,  but  throughout  all  classes  and  in  all 
conditions  of  life  the  spirit  of  commercialism 
and  the  ideals  of  a  Christian  people,  the  lusts 
of  the  flesh,  and  the  pride  of  life  on  the  one 
side,  and  simplicity,  brotherhood,  and  holi- 
ness on  the  other.  Here  is  the  long  desired 
unity  of  the  Christian  Church — not  identity 
of  opinion  or  tradition  or  form,  but  the 
unity  of  a  common  ideal  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  a  common  foe.  Here  is  the  hope  of 
national  welfare — that  the  people,  in  their 
controlling  instincts  and  national  aims  shall 
seek  first,  not  gain  or  glory,  but  God's  king- 
dom and  His  righteousness.  Here  finally  is 
the  hope  with  which  one  may  regard  the 
perplexing  issues  of  the  present  time — that 
if  the  force  of  spiritual  idealism,  which  is 


226  The  People 

ours  through  Jesus  Christ,  may  but  give 
itself  with  unhindered  power  to  the  new 
problem  of  redemption  which  the  new  world 
provides,  then  it  may  happen  again,  as  when 
the  Christian  religion  took  possession  of  the 
ancient  Roman  world,  that  the  spirit  of  com- 
mercialism shall  be  overborne  by  the  spirit 
of  love,  and  the  saying  of  the  ancient  prophet 
fulfilled,  that  the  wolf  shall  dwell  with  the 
lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie  down  with 
the  kid,  and  a  little  child  shall  lead  them. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 

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